During WWII the Japanese made the first known use of the jet stream when they created bombs that road it across the pacific on balloons and, using a pretty miraculous bit of engineering for the day, dropped when they reached the west coast of the US. While the program was obviously never going to be very damaging it was aimed at American morale, an early version of terrorism in a way. It was, however, a huge failure. First American scientists studied the sand that was used as part of the timing mechanism and thus found exactly where the bombs were being made, allowing them to go after their production. The main reason it failed however was because the government asked the media to simply ignore the bombs and never report on them. The media blackout kept the program from having its desired effects and made the Japanese feel it was not worth it to rebuild the program's infrastructure when it was destroyed. Or in short, reacting in the exact opposite way of how we respond to terrorism now put a quick stop to it. Obviously accomplishing a media blackout in the present day is a pipe dream, but imagine if we could. Terrorisms only real weapon is terror, the attacks are really not all the damaging when looked at in a relative way. Many more people died in 2001 from the misuse of home appliances then from 9/11, (I’m serious, look it up) yet you don’t see us wasting billions a year in a ‘War on Stupidity’. Do you think a world where we could accomplish a media blackout would be better off? Or better yet, do you think we would be better off if we would just ignore terrorist acts? Instead of making them the focal point of months of news and two presidential elections.
I can see your point but it's not even remotely tenable. There are many serious flaws in it. The easiest one to see is that the very same people who are screaming about the war now would scream even louder if there was an attempt to censor the media. Secondly, once you allowed that to start, where would it end? I could write whole pages about this but I'll refrain after making one more point. The situation you described in WWII was VERY limited and only involved the media in a single country - the U.S. What you are talking about involves every single media in the world - thousands of them AND their respective home governments. So it's not only a dangerous approach but an impossible one as well.
The problem, as I see it, is not the reporting of the event, but the lack of perspective in the news or, a more proper term, the sensationalism. I'm assuming that the "sensationalism" is strictly to increase readership and sell advertising. A headline saying "40 People Killed by Suicide Bomber" is more spectacular than to say, "Suicide Bomber Killed People ...But Many More Were Killed in Highway Accidents". The sensationalism seems to be a growing trend in news reporting, and I'm not exactly sure why ...except that perhaps people enjoy it, like it, buy into it. I mean, look at sciforums posted headlines ...we do exactly the same thing here. Topics are posted with "sensationalist" headlines so as to draw our attention to the "sensationalism", usually without any perspective at all. No, I think we need and/or want the news, but there's no reason for the news agencies to "sensationalize" it. It's just news, just like any other news. We have a problem with sensationalims ....and perhaps it's our very dull, uneventful lives that makes sensationalism sell so easily. We're bored as hell with our own lives that anything, even the death of thousands, helps break up the boredom. But I've discovered over a long period of time that .....Only the truly ignorant can really be bored. An intelligent person can overcome the boredom with simple imagination and flights of fantasy. TV and movies, etc. have helped to take away our imagination. Old time radio adventure shows were fantastic examples of how well our imaginations worked .....and all that's gone. Baron Max
An excellent point about the media fueling the fire. Maybe there needs to more thinking done by the politicians and the public before things come into action. A friend of mine says "minorities make the loudest noise" - sometimes it's easy to misunderstand what the public wants by the noise. Logic goes a long way - when taken away from the noise. - Shifty Russian www.WhoMakesYouSick.com ...tell the world
The MEDIA is one of the greatest causes of problems in the world than most anything else besides money and power.The MEDIA loves to make things seem different than what they really are or blow things out of proportion many times. If you try to control the MEDIA you have another problem in that it becomes a part of the state which can then manipulate what it wants the population to hear and see. In other words the MEDIA is a double edged sword, you're going to have problems with it one way or another no matter who's in charge of it.
The media will feed us anything we respond to by spending on them and their advertisers. The media is extremely vulnerable to compromises of public trust. Our problems of media compounding stupid policies are just another presentation of the appalling consequences of general public ignorance. Events are likely to soon force Americans to learn (with a new intensity and attentiveness) more about the active, accelerating world surrounding us. With more refined information, no American majority will be taken in by such two-bit barkers for reckless nationalism and entitlement as Bill O'Reilly. Other channels of information are now booming faster than Network TV's beginnings. Just as a Fox News fan has increasing difficulties carrying on a rational discussion among the rest of us here in SF, so will it be in the American streets. Rapidly: Most Americans have never really formed their own public opinion on matters global. Therefore, when a new and global stimulus sweeps over the nation, they can turn with the herd. Instantaneously. The Neocon Zeitgeist is now expiring along with the credibility of its Bush Administration host, which was (fortunately) incredibly amatuer with media matters. Had they a modern-day Goebbles, the Bush Administration would have been propelled to the stratosphere of fascist phenomena. But all that is left them now is shallow appeals to nationalism, because it's over for them (can't even launch a Big War). So the media that helped tarnish Clinton will now eviscerate Bush. Media reflects our ignorance and collective sense of entitlement, just as it will also reflect our morbid infatuation with spectacular falls from high places.
Indeed. Even if we include the occupants of the World Trade Center as having died "in an airliner accident," flying is still safer than driving!
Mr. Clinton tarnished himself, the media made it look rather funny and tried to lighten it up with his impeachment proceedings as I recall. The media are 90 percent Democrats so they won't exacerbate any problems a Democratic President has. Remember that Mr. Clinton was impeached by the House only the Senate kept him in power. Everything the media could do to make him look as good as they could during his ordeal they tried. You'll never see a unkind interview about Mr. Clinton, have you as yet? Who brings up that Mr. Clinton was impeached, never!
Annually, about 35-40k lives safer, as it was in in 2001. Per passenger mile, some multiple of that. Soothing music, spin in reels of rhyme, and softly present to the Audience FEAR. Fear that sells compellingly. Fear of Flying. Fear that is easily detected. Like the fear in the White House tonight. You assholes should have had some fear of lying. Command your monkeys to fly on from Baghdad to Damascus, but you're melting fast. Happy Halloween, Karl! And go directly to Hell. Oh, and let's remember that an impeachment is like an endictment: It doesn't assign guilt. Clinton was effectively acquited and allowed to serve out his term with a Congressional smack on the wrist.
I don't disagree with the core statement being made here but your analogy was terrible: First of all, terrorism is an ideological and thus well-calculated human activity and can be prevented or snuffed out using warfare. Household appliance related deaths are accidents and can only be prevented through proper usage and luck. Terrorism is something you can attack at the source, accidents can never truly be avoided.
Terrorism is in a sense an accident, because it requires the random extreme behavior of a political murderer. It is possible that the most violent criminals acting in the name of Jihad would be committing similar violent acts under any number of alternative circumstances. The important difference is that until they provided with a popular Cause, their murders are seldom attributable to a single international issue, policy, or policy trend. For these and other reasons, the following are examples of persons in the drivers seat in terms of the duration and impact of a terrorist plot or campaign: The US Presidential Cabinet; The Producers of US Network News; and American public opinion. These three are intertwined in fixing on an assymetric threat to the point of self-destructive behavior. Which is the motivation for international terror that is now manifesting, and spawning independent variants in a lifetime campaign of hatred against the USA. Our cultivated fear usually prevents us from putting into perspective the fact that the actual terrorists who will commit violent acts against Americans are vastly outnumbered by violent criminals among us who will hurt our citizens for any number of real or perceived injustices. But I think that we are slowly gaining a wider perspective. Americans are not going to jump onto a belligerent bandwagon to sort out unfortunate accidents of geography, like brown people living atop our petroleum reserves. No, the entire US economy will collapse before these living, affluent, jaded generations put their own asses on the line for anything, that is until present society lies in ruins. Understanding this even only viscerally, we are not going gently into some dark Dr. Strangelove night. The years ahead will be turbulent and painful, but I am proud of this generation that (even though it is close) wasn't so barbaric as to take the world down with us. We're thinking too slow in the USA. We're going to need to break down old paradigms, even political parties, and launch a new more public examination of the questions and answers that will soon be vital to our American standards of living. Watch this malignant rogue government crash like the obsolete box of accumulated special-interest garbage that it is. Watch it crash, and rejoice as enlightened American Patriots. We're about to eat much humble pie, but we're also about to get an Education. Bring it on!
Terrorism is not random and it is not an accident. Terrorists hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings have a real cause and the fear and death they inspire are intentional. As for our generation, I blame 1960s radicalism. That's another topic though.
So THEY caused it all? Stinkin' hippies. I hate them. Now please tell me why, Hagar. We can keep it on topic with a glance over the shoulder now and then.
One could say the same about murder and violent assault in the USA, couldn't they? Yet a single act of terrorism causes people to cringe in fear, while all the murders going on around them seem to have no effect. Baron Max
Yeah, I know. The media plays the biggest role with its sensationalism, but the government does as well with their releasing of small little "watch out" reports that have such a wide range that can apply to anything that basically makes the message meaningless to us as we're helpless to it, but they still release it anyways. It's as if they WANT us to live in fear. Heck, I've nothing to fear from terrorists. It's fellow Americans I'm scared of, heh. You can get run over any moment, a drunk can crash into you, some stupid gangbanger can shoot at you for fun, you can get caught in crossfires, you can get mugged, you can have your house broken into, you can have your home burned down. Heck, there's all sorts of domestic dangers. Getting killed by a terrorist is like winning the unlucky jackpot lotto. Getting killed by a fellow American is like winning a scratcher ticket. - N
Well, ya' see, that's because of the media, too!! If they did NOT post the "Watch Out" reports, and the media discovered that they had some intelligence reports, we'd never hear the end of it. And it's all just simple sensationalism to sell more papers and tv advertising. Notice that in the recent NYC subway scare, the media almost immediately began to question the validity of the reports ....but if a bomb had gone off, they'd have been all over the government like stink on an ape! See? The media does all this shit to us ....keeping us all stirred up and concerned. It sells papers and tv advertising. And I fully agree with you about the domestic violence. But we've "insulated" ourselves just by virtue of the mass of people ....if you live in some large city, no one worries about crap like that because ....."It always happens to the OTHER guy .....not YOU!" The vast population makes the chances almost nil that it WILL be you ....so we feel "insulated". As I get older and older, I realize more and more the vast power of the media. And most people here seem worried and concerned about "the government" ......when they should be shakin' in their boots about the media! Baron Max
No, it's the reality. We don't hear half the news that's reported internationally, and our news corporations are too worried about profit and political reprisals to report what they should. As far as sensationalism, good news isn't reported as often, BECAUSE IT'S NOT NEWS!
Hmm, I don't think ye're understanding the term "sensationalism". That doesn't mean good news or bad news or any other kind of news. Sensationalism is MAKING some "news" into much more than it really is ...just to create a stir in the viewer/listener/reader. It ain't got nothing to do with lies or truth or anything else. A story that "sensationalizes", say, the number of combat deaths in Iraq when they hide (or fail to mention or put into perspective) the fact that many, many more people have been murdered in Washington, DC over the same period of time is wrong! It's done for sensationalism or to further their own agenda. The power of the media is a scarey damned thing ....y'all should be wary, very, very wary of it. Baron Max
A war on modern terrorism is like nailing Jell-O to the wall. You can go hunt down the terrorist, but the act of hunting them creates more hate directed at you, which in turn breads more terrorists. Personally I think the idea of trying to get middle-eastern nations to embrace democracy is a wonderful one, but if it were to ever happen it would have to be through their own internal actions. We will never succeed in spreading democracy by shoving it down people’s throats. That is a good point, I think I phrased what I was saying poorly. The essence of what I meant was “What would it be like if we had a responsible media that could be trusted to not sensationalize while also telling us what we need to know.” And that is a pipe dream. P.S. I'm new to these forums, how do I make a quote show it's author's name?
