terrorist's bombings reporting

Why does the news industry go out of their way to broadcast the responcible group of a terrorist bombing? I would think that if I wanted to protest something (how about the calling of Canada Geese as Canadian Geese by americans) so I blew up a car and hurt some innocent shoppers. Now if the newscasters don’t report that I called them and told them why I did it, then nobody knows why these innocent people were hurt. Therefore it wouldnt do me any good to do the action anyway, right?

Isn’t the news agency that publicizes the event’s group actually assisting them and thus shouldn’t they be charged with a crime?

The natural response to a man-made tragedy is “who did this, and why?” If answers aren’t forthcoming, people will invent them.

After the bombing in Oklahoma City there was constant speculation that it was the work of Muslim extrmists. After all, the MO (a rented truck full of explosives) was identical to the World Trade Center bombing a few years earlier.

As it turned out, Oklahoma City was our own home-grown attack. By reporting that, the media nipped a substantial and incorrect anit-Muslim backlash in the bud.

As for the second part of your assumption, that it wouldn’t do a terrorist any good if their actions weren’t publciized, think back to all the actions where no one claimed credit for them (e.g., Lockerbie). Publicity, or the lack of it, does not stop a fanatic.

In the UK we tried something related.
This was what Ms Thatcher had to say,

AUTHOR: Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of Great Britain
QUOTATION: [Democratic nations] must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.

The unfortunate effect of this was that all organisations
defined as terrorist by the UK government were banned from appearing in person or allowed to have their speech broadacast.

In reality this was in direct response to Arab terrorists settling matters between themselves on UK streets but was extended to cover the IRA.

This certainly had little or no effect on the policy of low level war/terrorism of the IRA but there was a reduction of hijackings, hostage taking from other organisations mostly of a mid-east nature but that could well have been as a result of a more concerted effort by western intelligence agencies, we may never know.

The IRA holds no affection whatsoever for much of the British public for various reasons, that need not be explored here, but one constant source of annoyance for some politicians was that there would be an incident with loss of life and our media would have spokesmen from associated organistations(but note not actual members of the group) giving their opinions.

These spokepersons were seen as mouthpieces for the ‘terrorists’(one mans terrorist is anothers’ freedom fighter) operating almost by franchise for them.

The links between the political(Sinn Fein) and the IRA ‘military’ were and are murky, appearing for all the world like a curtain of authoratative spokesperson with a thin film of deniability.

The result was that under our anti-terrorism law Sinn Feinwas deemed so linked to the Military IRA that they were indistiguishable so all media access by them was made an offence.

The UK public were then left with tv reports of Sinn Fein spokespersons such as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness pictured about to make some statement and a reporter paraphrasing what had been said.This gained a certain amount of risibility and concerns were raised about freedom of speech so the media changed its tactics and used broadly similar looking actors to read out exactly what the banned spokesperson said, this being to show the absurdity of the law.

Ms Thatcher condemned the media but further legislation would have proved impossible to formulate though it was explored…

All the while Ms Thatcher was condemning people like Ken Livingstone who advocated talking officially to the IRA and she publicly said that her government would never deal with the IRA.

Kens’ position was that the only way peace would come would be to drop the terrorist publicity ban and talk to Sinn Fein.

The current peace process only took proper hold once Sinn Fein had been recognised as political and hence no publicity ban, but the most hypocritical thing in Thatcher’s stance was that her officials at her knowing and authorisation not only talked with the IRA but were negotiating with convicted and incarcerated IRA prisoners in The Maze.

So I would guess that it depends on the circumstances, yes it was part of a policy to deal with one group of terrorists but at the same time it hindered dealings with another group that were also regarded as terrorists too.

I should point out that these contacts took place in secret and were only revealed nearly a decade later.

well after a bombing , if I put up a billboard claiming that some group was responcible then I would be arrested or at least investigated. But the newscasters can say anything they want.

Kunilou,
You can’t stop a fanatic from killing people but you can stop a fanatic from getting his message across by killing people if there is no message.