Terrorism and the Mass Media - Essay Example

?Moral Panic: Terrorism and the Mass Media By Moral Panic: Terrorism and the Mass Media Introduction Moral panics involve the perpetuation of fear of a common enemy or fear of a threat of harm to society. In each case the fear is profound and is “widespread”.1 Moral panic is essentially the “exaggerated social reaction” resulting from “the activities of particular groups and/or individuals.”2 These activities are both presented and perceived as serious social issues and concerns with the media amplifying and broadening the resulting panic.3 It has been argued that the media can be a power agent in commandeering responses and more especially moral panic.4 This paper argues that the media unnecessarily and irresponsibly represents the threat of terrorism particularly since the 9/11 terror attacks on US soil. In other words, the media engages moral panic in reporting and informing the public of the threat of terrorism. This paper is therefore divided into two main parts. The first part of this paper sets out the theoretical underpinnings of moral panic. The second part of this paper identifies how the theoretical underpinnings of moral panic are manifested in the media’s coverage of terrorism since the 9/11 terror attacks on the US. Moral Panic This paper analyzes the degree of moral panic used in the mass media in its coverage of terrorism following the 9/11 terror attacks. In this regard, moral panic is used within the theoretical structure espoused by Stan Cohen in 1973. According to Cohen (1973, cited in Critcher, 2003) every now and again, societies are seized by moral panic. To this end, moral panic is characterized by six essential features. First there is a “condition, episode, person or group or persons” who are defined as a “threat to societal values and interests”.5 Secondly, the nature of the perceived threat and the individuals or groups involved are represented in “stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media”.6 Cohen’s (1973, cited in Critcher, 2003) third essential feature of moral panic is the setting of moral standards by “editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people”.7 Fourthly, “socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnosis and solutions”.8 Fifthly, there is a resort to or an evolution of ways to cope with the event/events. Finally, “the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible.”9 According to Critcher (2003) Cohen was describing a chain reaction instigated by the media’s exaggerated coverage of deviance among a group of young people who had come together on England’s east coast in 1964. The youth were identified as Mods and Rockers. At the gathering, the youth became bored and a number of minor altercations took place and the police were involved. The headlines in the Newspapers bored catchphrases such as “wild one”, “97 arrests” and “terror”.10 One editorial demanded that government take action and another newspaper explained friction between the two groups.11 Another incident allegedly involving Mods and Rockers occurred shortly after the first incident in other coastal towns. The newspaper carried essentially the same types of exaggerated reports as before. The spillover effect was evidenced by the judiciary’s treatment of those who had been arrested. Many were denied bail, others were subjected to excessive fines for minor offences such as obstruction and those facing more serious offences were incarcerated. Local business representatives, citizens and politicians called for harsher consequences. Thus, according to Critchen “ a whole new social problem had been defined”.12 A series of legislative interventions were observed with the passage of the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act and the Malicious Damage Act. Other interventions included the police actively turning young people away from resorts on the coast. Anyone failing to take the police advice would be arrested. By 1966, gatherings on the coast diminished and the media’s attention also waned.13 In the final analysis, moral panic is much more than the exaggerated coverage of an episode by the media. It is also about the manner in which the news reports are received and acted upon. Moral panic, led by the media can instigate far reaching consequences not only for the parties or party creating the malaise, but for society as a whole. Moral panic puts pressure on governments and legislators to act and those responses, while seemingly appropriate for the immediate deterrence of the exaggerated acts, government responses to the pressure, can result in laws that can encroach upon the fundamental rights and freedoms of innocent citizens. Moral Panic and Terrorism The phrase moral panic has been in use as a characterization of society for more than 30 years.14 This is particularly so with respect to terrorism which invokes fear that is often described as inherently unprecedented. Forst et al inform that “public’s fears of terrorism are inflated well beyond reason” with significant consequences.15 First, exaggerated fear distracts the public so that they become counterproductive. It promotes activities that may cause greater harm than good and may induce excessive stress levels and thus divert human and cash capital. It can cause a level of suspicion among the public with the result that individuals are signaled out and thus either harmed physically or deprived of fundamental human rights. Forst et al aptly stated that “terror makes fear, and fear stops thinking”.16 The media can take most of the credit for the fear perpetuated by terrorism. Reporting techniques and the chain reaction that its sets off can aptly be defined as moral panic. There is an observable partnership between the media, politicians, law enforcement and many others that suggests an active partnership determined to invoke fear and spread what can be described as moral panic. Moral panic in relation to terrorism reporting often immediately invokes the first dimension of Cohen’s five elements of moral panic which can be described as racial profiling. The media’s representation of the groups or individuals associated with terrorism reaches into the moral fiber of society and produces the fear and distractions that are palpably counterproductive. Ponynting et al’s report of an incident in Sydney and the media coverage that follows poignantly illustrates Cohen’s first dimension of moral panic.17 In 1998, a teen Korean-Australian boy was stabbed in Sydney. Media representations of Lebanese Australian males was described as an exercise in “continuing criminalization” and the “racialization of crime in religion”. 18 This was buttressed by an active police initiative that orchestrated excessive stops and searches of Lebanese Australian males. This in turn led to attacks on a police station.19 Thus an unavoidable chain reaction and interaction between the public and society could be observed and is precisely the type of societal upheaval that Cohen warns against in his formulation of the 6 dimensions of moral panic. This is an unfortunate consequence of irresponsible media reporting and political campaigning in the media. As Poynting et al point out: Whether the issue is perceived as the problem of ethnic youth gangs or as difficulty experienced by young people from ethnic communities largely depends on a social “frame fo reference” – one that is too often constructed by the media.20 Thus the media can take most of the credit for the moral panic created and the consequential harm to society, particularly the wasted human capital resources and the escalation in crime evidenced by the attack on the police station. Since the 9/11 terror attacks, the public has been inundated persistently with images of terrorism and terrorists. Media coverage has deliberately reported on security alerts and perceptions of threats on a daily basis. Add to this the political addresses that traverse over from heightening public awareness to inducing moral panic. Rothe and Muzzatti caution that: The edification of a moral panic among the US population has exacerbated a culture embedded in fear. While the events of September 11, 2001 were indeed tragic, the construction of moral panic by the media and politicians to support their interests is a greater social tragedy.21 Immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US, a new social concern was identified and occupied the media and politicians and by extension the nation as a whole. The new social concern was the war on terrorism. For months following the 9/11 attacks, the news media was almost entirely fixated on international terrorism. Although there were several newsworthy incidents such as the Enron scandal and Salt Lake City winter Olympics, terrorism dominated the news coverage,22 suggesting that terrorism was an ongoing threat and issue for Americans. The source of the threat was identified pursuant to Cohen’s first dimension of moral panic. The source of the threat was identified by virtue or endless reports on violence in the Middle East directly linking the Middle East as a source of the threat of terrorism on US soil. Reports included updates on the Gardez battle in Afghanistan’s eastern mountains, growing violence between Israel and Palestine, the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl a Wall Street journalist in Pakistan and containment of Yemen’s terrorism.23 Cohen’s fourth and fifth dimensions of moral panic were also observed in the news coverage of terrorism. The fourth dimension of moral panic was observed in the reports offering opinions about the economic consequences of the threat of terrorism. This was accomplished by the transmitting of reports from experts on how the terror attacks of 9/11 was impacting Wall Street’s stock market. The fifth dimension of moral panic was manifested by the reports on how businesses were dealing with the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Updates and explanations about airport security were also reported.24 The excessive media coverage of terrorism since the 9/11 terror attacks were aptly described by Rothe and Muzzati. Rothe and Muzatti noted that: Since the attacks of September 11th, 2001, terrorism has experienced a prominence in discourse across the U.S. The Representations of terrorists and terrorism by the news media and politi have contributed to the edifice of terrorism as a “moral panic”.25 Ordartey-Wellington’s report of a media reporting relative to anti-terrorism efforts in Canada following the 9/11 terror attacks is instructive. In 2003, news of Operation Thread, an initiative commandeered by Canada was reported nationally and internationally. The operation was intended to break a terror cell of Al-Qaeda members. The suspects were held up to “domestic and international opprobrium” and even after all that exposure, “the state security apparatus conceded that the allegations of terrorism were unfounded”.26 The Canadian experience aptly reflects the first dimension of Cohen’s moral panic definition and in general reflects Cohen’s contention that moral panic is the “mobilization of strong social sentiment against perceived threats to the social order.”27 The news media engaged in the protracted reporting of Operation Thread which surrounded the apprehension of 23 individuals, 22 of which were Pakistanis and another was Indian. The arrests took place in Toronto by Canada’s Public Security and Anti-Terrorism organizations.28 Odatey-Wellington studied 35 newspaper articles surrounding the coverage of Operation Thread. The articles appeared in the Globe and Mail and the National Post. According to Odatey-Wellington, the news coverage and the actual conduct of Operation Thread are: Indicative of how the media collaborate with the state security apparatus in constructing moral panics.29 Operation Thread was first brought to the public under the headline: Canadian Arrests Mirror 9/11: Detainee Trained to Fly.30 This headline immediately capitalizes on the moral panic associated with 9/11 and is intentionally calculated to either replicate that fear or to perpetuate that fear. In order to give the story credibility, the article ensures that the public is aware that the source of the information contained in the article came from the government. Racial profiling was among the information contained in the article and it described the alleged culprits as primarily “between 18 and 33” and that all but one of the individuals “have connections to Pakistan’s Punjab province, noted for its Sunni Muslim extremism”.31 The article makes a pointed effort to heighten the risk of Canada as a target of terror attacks either similar to or worse than the previous attacks on the US on 9/11. To bring the point home, the article contained a photograph of a nuclear plant accompanied by a caption that read: One of the 19 Pakistani national arrested in the anti-terrorism probe trained to fly over the Pickering nuclear power plant.32 The obvious implications were that any person coming across this story, would be reliably informed that Canada was under a serious threat of terror attacks that would either mirror or exceed the devastation experience in the US on 9/11. Thus the handling of Operation Thread was not only a case of irresponsible reporting, but essentially an exercise in Cohen’s description of moral panic. The attention on the nationality of the suspected terrorists is a common theme in the reporting of Operation Thread. For example one headline read: Immigration authorities name arrested Pakistanis.”33 Having connected the suspects to Pakistan, the articles go to great lengths to connect them to terror networks, specifically, Al-Qaida. 34 Even when the suspects are released, the Newspapers were unrelenting in their contention that Operation Thread was a viable operation and the threat of terrorism was and continues to be a major concern. Rather than report that the suspects had been cleared, the Newspaper direct attention to the ills of training these individuals to fly and alludes to a contention that “the dominant discourse regarding Operation Thread is coming apart”.35 The reports of Operation Thread demonstrate a conscious effort to identify and direct social concerns and Cohen’s description of moral panic. Fears are consciously mobilized against ethnic groups and the potential for terror attacks at any given time. Thus the reporting of Operation Thread not only targets a specific group, but deliberately informs the public that they are vulnerable to terror attacks. By engaging sources from the government’s security factions, the media gives its warnings and replications of 9/11 credibility. The Globe and Mail takes the moral panic to another level altogether by reporting that the security apparatus may be insufficient to protect the public from the threat of terrorism. On September 2, 2003 one article reported: Wanted man can’t turn himself in”.36 The suggestion is therefore that, the security factions were hopelessly incompetent. This kind of reporting can only raise the specter of moral panic to another level of mass fear. The unfortunate suggestion is therefore that terrorists are free to operate with immunity since the security factions are inept to such an extent that a suspect cannot even turn himself in. Cohen’s 6th dimension of moral panic which anticipates that “the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible”37 does not appear to be coming to fruition any time soon. Each year the events of 9/11 are relived and replayed on the anniversary of the attack, invoking strong sentiments and keeping the fear and thus moral panic alive.38 Conclusion Terrorism is perhaps the clearest example of Cohen’s moral panic. It exhibits all the characteristics of the mobilization of moral and social sentiments against a particular group and a particular type of incident. It invokes active fear and active retaliation which can be described as counterproductive. For instance Operation Thread informs of how state resources were wasted on an ethnic group only to find out at the end of the investigation that there was no threat to begin with. It is unfortunate that the media in partnership with officials engage in irresponsible public information strategies that can only be characterized as moral panic. It puts law abiding citizens at risk of harm, creates another class of criminals under the guise of hate and revenge crimes, compromises civil liberties and wastes human lives and state resources. Therefore moral panic as a method of sharing information via the media and officials remains an enigma. 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