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| French media’s blackout on terrorists’ identities is missing the point | French media’s blackout on terrorists’ identities is missing the point |
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| Back in 2012, at the beginning of the wave of terrorist violence that has now broken out over France, a 23-year-old petty criminal called Mohammed Merah killed seven people in Toulouse and the nearby town of Montauban. While police surrounded his small apartment, Merah spent his final hours editing together a 20-minute video clip of images of his killings. | Back in 2012, at the beginning of the wave of terrorist violence that has now broken out over France, a 23-year-old petty criminal called Mohammed Merah killed seven people in Toulouse and the nearby town of Montauban. While police surrounded his small apartment, Merah spent his final hours editing together a 20-minute video clip of images of his killings. |
| Shortly before dying in a firefight, Merah slipped through the police lines around his home and posted a USB key containing the clip to Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV network. It was never broadcast. But the fact that Merah, as a final act, was still thinking about publicity, and using the mainstream media to obtain that publicity, is striking. | Shortly before dying in a firefight, Merah slipped through the police lines around his home and posted a USB key containing the clip to Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV network. It was never broadcast. But the fact that Merah, as a final act, was still thinking about publicity, and using the mainstream media to obtain that publicity, is striking. |
| Four years on and little has changed. The desire for publicity remains. | |
| Related: How should the media cover terror attacks? Readers' views | Related: How should the media cover terror attacks? Readers' views |
| Three of the four most recent attackers in Germany and France filmed statements pledging allegiance to Isis before acting. After their attacks, Isis released the clips, thus claiming the dead men as their own “combatants” and the brutal murders they committed as further strikes in the war the group believes it is waging. | Three of the four most recent attackers in Germany and France filmed statements pledging allegiance to Isis before acting. After their attacks, Isis released the clips, thus claiming the dead men as their own “combatants” and the brutal murders they committed as further strikes in the war the group believes it is waging. |
| Le Monde and several other French news organisations have now decided they will no longer publish photographs of people responsible for terrorist killings, to avoid the bestowing of “posthumous glorification” on the perpretators. | Le Monde and several other French news organisations have now decided they will no longer publish photographs of people responsible for terrorist killings, to avoid the bestowing of “posthumous glorification” on the perpretators. |
| There is some logic to this. To be seen as heroes, terrorists needs an audience. The Arabic word for “martyr” comes from a root which can also mean “witness”. A witness needs an audience as much as a hero. That audience, of course, is God. But most human beings look for more earthly approval too. Jihad is demonstrative. | |
| More broadly, the French media are engaging with a critically important issue: the mainstream media’s relationship with contemporary terrorism. This is of course only the latest phase of a very long-running debate. The phenomenon of terrorism as we know it today has its roots in the late 19th century, with the wave of anarchist and related violence dramatised on our TV screens with a new adaptation of Conrad’s The Secret Agent. | |
| What the violence then, and over the decades since, has showed us is quite how much terrorism depends on the media and on democracy. Without either it cannot work. Without media, only a few people know of the violence a terrorist has committed, meaning that the irrational fear which extremists hope to provoke will not be produced. Without democracy, there is limited pressure on a ruler to respond to any popular anxiety. | What the violence then, and over the decades since, has showed us is quite how much terrorism depends on the media and on democracy. Without either it cannot work. Without media, only a few people know of the violence a terrorist has committed, meaning that the irrational fear which extremists hope to provoke will not be produced. Without democracy, there is limited pressure on a ruler to respond to any popular anxiety. |
| Successive waves of terrorists have continually struggled to convince mainstream media organisations to give them publicity. Back in 1907, when The Secret Agent was published, the news of only the most devastating attacks by the anarchists of the period reached a wider public, and certainly no communiqués from the groups themselves. Throughout the 20th century violent extremists struggled to reach a significant audience with their pamphlets, tapes and finally, video cassettes. Evan as late as the mid-to-late 90s, Osama bin Laden expressed anger to associates at the failure, as he saw it, of mainstream news professionals in the Middle East and the west to pay either his ideological diatribes or his organisation’s bombings sufficient attention. The 9/11 attacks were in part a result of this frustation. | Successive waves of terrorists have continually struggled to convince mainstream media organisations to give them publicity. Back in 1907, when The Secret Agent was published, the news of only the most devastating attacks by the anarchists of the period reached a wider public, and certainly no communiqués from the groups themselves. Throughout the 20th century violent extremists struggled to reach a significant audience with their pamphlets, tapes and finally, video cassettes. Evan as late as the mid-to-late 90s, Osama bin Laden expressed anger to associates at the failure, as he saw it, of mainstream news professionals in the Middle East and the west to pay either his ideological diatribes or his organisation’s bombings sufficient attention. The 9/11 attacks were in part a result of this frustation. |
| This is of course less of a problem for Isis. Digital technology has put the means of both production and dissemination in terrorists’ hands. Today’s bomber has a rather different set of communication capabilities than bin Laden’s bombers, let alone Conrad’s. Many recent attacks – though not those this month – have seen the use of a Go Pro camera to record point-of-view images of a violent act to then post on social media. More than anything, today’s bomber can be confident that a large number of us will view, forward, retweet or otherwise share the material without much reflection, vastly increasing its audience. He would know too that passers by are likely to film scenes of carnage, which too would be shared and even published or broadcast by mainstream networks and sites. | This is of course less of a problem for Isis. Digital technology has put the means of both production and dissemination in terrorists’ hands. Today’s bomber has a rather different set of communication capabilities than bin Laden’s bombers, let alone Conrad’s. Many recent attacks – though not those this month – have seen the use of a Go Pro camera to record point-of-view images of a violent act to then post on social media. More than anything, today’s bomber can be confident that a large number of us will view, forward, retweet or otherwise share the material without much reflection, vastly increasing its audience. He would know too that passers by are likely to film scenes of carnage, which too would be shared and even published or broadcast by mainstream networks and sites. |
| It is true that in recent years, mainstream media organisations have used images of the aftermath of Isis attacks with little consideration, publishing images from the group’s own literature and posting the group’s videos almost in their entirety on their own websites. On one UK tabloid’s website, such a video, from which only the actual images of execution had been excised, was incongrously preceded by an advertisement for family holidays from a well-known high street travel agent. | It is true that in recent years, mainstream media organisations have used images of the aftermath of Isis attacks with little consideration, publishing images from the group’s own literature and posting the group’s videos almost in their entirety on their own websites. On one UK tabloid’s website, such a video, from which only the actual images of execution had been excised, was incongrously preceded by an advertisement for family holidays from a well-known high street travel agent. |
| Some of these images may be important to inform the reader; some may well not be. Yet the decision of Le Monde and others to reconsider their use of imagery following attacks – if welcome – misses the point. | |
| The problem, of course, is that the audience that might glorify the “martyrs” is not the one looking at their pictures in Le Monde. As long as there are people who will celebrate the actions of potential attackers – and who can be reached directly via social media – the desire for “glorification” will remain. | The problem, of course, is that the audience that might glorify the “martyrs” is not the one looking at their pictures in Le Monde. As long as there are people who will celebrate the actions of potential attackers – and who can be reached directly via social media – the desire for “glorification” will remain. |
| Every generation has its own terrorism, which reflects that generation’s own failings and, in some ways, its strengths. That is why the phenomenon fascinates authors, filmmakers, analysts, and the rest of us. The initial surprise that Isis – a supposedly “medieval” organisation - uses social media has now ebbed. What has yet to emerge is any coherent idea of what can be done to stop them exploiting quite so effectively the extraordinary freedom and power of the digital revolution. | Every generation has its own terrorism, which reflects that generation’s own failings and, in some ways, its strengths. That is why the phenomenon fascinates authors, filmmakers, analysts, and the rest of us. The initial surprise that Isis – a supposedly “medieval” organisation - uses social media has now ebbed. What has yet to emerge is any coherent idea of what can be done to stop them exploiting quite so effectively the extraordinary freedom and power of the digital revolution. |
| • This article was amended on 29 July 2016 because an earlier version said: “The word ‘martyr’ comes from a root in Arabic which can also mean ‘witness’.” To clarify: the Arabic word for “martyr” comes from a root which can also mean “witness”. The English word “martyr” comes from the Greek word for “witness”. |