Faces of terror

Will withholding the names and images of terrorists from TV and newspapers have any real impact in the age of social media?

There is nothing new about terror or controversy and how the media should respond.

The modern age of terror coverage probably began in 1974 when a Californian TV station KNXT attached what it dubbed a minicam to a transmitter truck and broadcast live pictures around the US of the shoot out between police and the Symbionese Liberation Army, kidnappers of the heiress Patty Hearst. It was the dawn of the modern age of television news.

In Derry/Londonderry the local IRA commander once complained to a Guardian correspondent that the shooting of a British soldier hadn’t made the edition of the paper that goes to Northern Ireland. The murder had missed the deadline.

According to the correspondent the IRA man promised to shoot the next soldier in time to make all editions of the paper.

Mrs.Thatcher notoriously tried to deny terrorists the “oxygen” of publicity – an approach that led to representatives of extreme political parties in Northern Ireland appearing on screen with their words mouthed by actors something that was at the same time absurd and tended to draw more attention to them.

It all seems so terribly quaint and so very long ago but the issue of how to deal with terror and indeed the oxygen of publicity is still very much with us in the wake of the current outbreak of jihadist terror attacks across Europe.

The current wake of Islamist terror forces us to consider once again how this Hydra-headed monster should be covered in the media and whether guidelines on media responsibility and practice need to be updated to cope with modern terror’s media sophistication.

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Are there any lessons to be learned from the approach of a number of French and German newspapers and TV channels in refusing to carry the names and images of terrorists following the Nice atrocity and the murder of the 85-year old priest Father Jacques Hamel.

They promise to give all possible information about those responsible apart from their photograph and surname. As the murderers usually carry their ID, personal publicity is clearly something they want, it is argued. Should their wishes be granted?

French newspapers were themselves divided with Le Figaro and Liberation opposing the self-denying decision of Le Monde.

In the wake of such atrocities it is completely understandable to want to concentrate on the victims and avoid doing anything to glorify the radicalised jihadists and do everything possible to avoid copycat suicides. If withholding surnames and images would do anything to help then it might be worth considering.

There is no point in reaching for pointless gestures like a small child covering his eyes to make the monsters in the dark go away.

We need to be able to look in the eyes of those responsible and know as much about them as possible and the interests of the public should prevail.

However, the real issue does not lie with newspapers or even conventional television but with mobile phones and the web.

Compared with the adroit use of online videos depicting jihadi violence, the issue of a still photograph in a newspaper pales into insignificance.

On the whole television in the UK handles jihadi terror in a balanced way showing enough to avoid sanitising the effects of terror without revelling in the violence – though live coverage when children may be watching is a difficult issue.

The problems of language remain. There are still too many examples to be heard of the use of “insurgents” or “militants” as if these were members of some sort of profession.

Someone who deliberately drives an enormous lorry at men, women and children or cuts the throat of a priest, is a terrorist and it is difficult to think of another word that will do. Even jihadist carries too great a connotation of rational cause.

The BBC has always insisted that the use of the word terrorist is not banned – it’s just that across news outlets it’s rarely used – though they are not so squeamish in Northern Ireland – apart from in quotes from non-BBC contributors.

Live coverage of hostage situations, where the terrorists themselves can be watching the coverage, or which can actually disrupt police operations, is an entirely different matter.

Ironically BFM TV, France’s biggest news channel, which said it would no longer broadcast pictures of Islamist terrorists, was criticised for talking to the Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly during the Charlie Hebdo and Jewish supermarket attacks.

It is unlikely that British broadcasters would do such a thing – nor should they.

The central issue, and the one that is the most intractable, is of course social media and the way Islamist terrorists have been able to promote their cause and reach into the bedrooms of the vulnerable and susceptible.

The main search engines and online breaking news organisations are all American with an admirable attachment to the first amendment of the US constitution.

In addition companies like Twitter have also tended to argue that with tweets often running in the thousands per second nothing could be done about the problem. This always seemed strange given their skills in creating algorithms that can go as far as predicting our behaviour.

There are indeed algorithms for taking down the endless creation of multiple sites the jihadists use to try to sustain the flow of vile propaganda and they are being used.

Freedom is never absolute but unfortunately has to be measured against the scale of the threat to democratic and open societies.

At its heart the battle will have to be fought by security services but those creating algorithms for social media platforms will also have a vital role to play – rather more than newspapers or television stations fruitlessly pondering over whether to withhold a name or an image.

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