Brigitte L. Nacos

This work explores the use of political violence for the sake of publicity and its effect on political decision-making. She offers a blueprint both for effective public information and media relations during terrorism crises as well as for ethical news coverage of major terrorist incidents.

Over the last fifteen years, incidents of anti-American terrorism have become increasingly common. Until recently, however, Americans believed that such violent acts would not occur on American soil. The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City, the epicenter of American finance, was a rude awakening. Terrorism and the Media comes to readers at a crossroad in American history, when U.S. national security experts anticipate more acts of international terrorism at home and abroad. The author contends that terrorists are very successful in exploiting the vital link between the news media, public opinion, and decision-making - a pattern which might be called a calculus of violence. Terrorism works because media coverage of such incidents influence the American public to support government responses that protect the victims of terrorism, most of all hostages, at the expense of the national interest. Moreover, presidents and other high-level officials tend to follow public opinion. Written in a lively, journalistic style, the book is based on scholarly research of such shocking incidents as the Iranian hostage crisis, the hijackings of the Achille Lauro and TWA Flight 847, and the bombings at Rome airport and on Pan Am Flight 103. In the process, the author casts a critical eye on the practices of such media giants as The CBS Evening News and The New York Times. Terrorism and the Media includes an assessment of the World Trade Center bombing and considers the similarities and differences between terrorism inside and outside a targeted country. This first book to focus exclusively on the consequences of terrorism against the United States will be essential reading for politicians, journalists, and other professionals who confront these issues directly. It will be equally informative for the general reader interested in terrorist groups and the immense problems they cause even for the most powerful nation in the world.

While we have long known that the strategies of terrorism rely heavily on media coverage of attacks, this is a look at the role played by media in counterterrorism, and the ways that, in the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration manipulated coverage to maintain a climate of fear. Drawing on in-depth analysis of counterterrorism in the years after 9/11, including the issuance of terror alerts and the decision to invade Iraq, the authors present a compelling case that the Bush administration hyped fear, while obscuring civil liberties abuses and concrete issues of preparedness. The media, meanwhile, largely abdicated its watchdog role, choosing to amplify the administration's message while downplaying issues that might have called the administration's statements and strategies into question. The book extends through Hurricane Katrina, and the more skeptical coverage that followed, then the first year of the Obama administration, when an increasingly partisan political environment presented the media, and the public, with new problems of reporting and interpretation. This book is an analysis of the intertwined failures of government and media and their costs to our nation.