LOL!!

War not going the way it does in SoCom? Blame it on someone else.

They have the best military ever to be seen on the face of the planet, and somehow they still screw up security, what a joke!

Mark

And that surprises you? Hell, the New York Times has an al Qaeda terrorist writing for them. I guess the democrats at the Times can save some money by letting the terrorist himself serve up the propaganda instead of their highly paid "journalists."

"Both the media and terrorists benefit from terrorist incidents," their study contends. Terrorists get free publicity for themselves and their cause. The media, meanwhile, make money "as reports of terror attacks increase newspaper sales and the number of television viewers."

Terrorist/MSM connection indeed. Blood, pain, and death. The MSM aids and abetts the terrorists with their coverage on a daily basis.

The MSM should focus their coverage on the US and Coalition forces'and their missions. The courage and bravery of our troops while they fight the Islamic terrorists should be displayed on the nightly news. We should see MSM interviews with US soldiers. Let the soldiers speak for themselves and tell us about their missions and how they dealt with them. The MSM could be a powerful ally of freedom and democracy if they just change their angle of coverage by focusing on good rather than evil.

It would also be more helpful if the media would spend more time covering the nature of Islamic Extremism and what its goals are. If they did this, the average Anerican and the average person in the Western world would have a better understanding of the enemy we are fighting.

B.Poster,

Exactly. Drag Islam into the daylight.

The neocon psyops have to paint the terrorists to be subhuman murderers (which they may well be) so that when independent contractors machinegun them down in cold blood, videotape it and set it to Elvis music, Americans all nod their heads in approval. If you JUST showed American soldiers killing terrorists, then they'd just look like killers. It's an old movie technique, where you MUST make the bad guy really bad by killing children or something, so you can kill them in the end and everyone applauds.

The REAL problem is calling them "terrorists" in the first place. They're just criminals, gang thugs, religious zealots. "Terrorist" implies credibility and intelligence, like economist, or theologist, or strategist. Like somehow they've mastered the art of terror, when they're just delusional goofballs indoctrinated from birth to obey clerics to get their quota of afterlife virgins. Unless of course you are referring to the beloved Iraqis we invaded to liberate.

As much as we'd all like to villify the MSM for all our ills, the MSM really has one agenda and only one agenda: make bucks. That's it. Not very noble. Just freak people out so they tune in tomorrow.

Want real news? Watch C-SPAN. Real politics. Real human events. REAL boring.

An interesting premise, to be sure. However, causality is a slippery slope.

Your contention is that the MSM should not cover terrorist attacks, for this increases terrorists visibility and the number of attacks.

I'm curious, then: should the media stop covering Bush administration events? the President too frequently mentions 9-11 and Al-queda in defense of a wide range of policies. By your logic, every mention of 9-11 or Al-queda draws attention to AQ, thus increasing their prominence, and DIRECTLY causing more terrorist attacks. Therefore, for the good of the country, the MSM should simply ignore virtually all Bush admin. press events, since they all mention 9-11. Furthermore, we should all hold President Bush personally accountable for increased terrorist activity, since he personally mentions 9-11 in every other sentence he speaks. After all, logic is logic, right?

Of course, if we go even further, we must assume that the Iraq war itself caused a huge increase in terrorism, since it draws attention to AQ. In fact, by your logic the appropriate response to terrorism is to just ignore it, which is exactly what you deride Clinton for allegedly doing.

Finally, the very premise of your argument is countered by all your other posts, which tout Iraq as a resounding success and an increasingly stable place. Either its stabilizing, in which case the media-terrorist relationship does not exist; or Iraq is destabilizing and failing, in which case the media-terrorist relationship does exist.

Clearly, you have no idea what's going on, you're just looking for something to blame.

"LOL!! War not going the way it does in SoCom? Blame it on someone else."

That's right, TEO! Those dastardly ultraconservatives at the Univ. of Zurich and Cambridge U. are once more carrying water for the neocons!

JPL,

You obviously are trying to ignore the point I was making.

Are you saying then, that everyone should ignore terrorism, world-wide, and that will stop them.

If everyone just closes their ears, and we forget that there is a civil war going on in Iraq, then everything will just work itself out.

You amaze me with the lack of the most fundamental grasp of reality. That is like saying if the MSM would just stop reporting on rape, then the rapists will all get bored of not getting limelight and quit.

Think about what you're saying here, c'mon.

"Are you saying then, that everyone should ignore terrorism, world-wide, and that will stop them."

Why wasn't this John Kerry's plank in 2004. Just ignore them or treat them as a "nuisance".

LOL TEO, you stepped in it again.

We thought about what KERRY WAS SAYING, and we told him to take a hike.

That's not what is being suggested here. What is being suggested here is a little balance. Gloom and doom 24/7 because these guys are a liberal propaganda machine ultimately kills more people which liberals are the ones railing against in the first place.

It's the circle of life Simba!

Steve,

No. You see, President Bush is one of the good guys who is working to defeat terrorism...thus reporting on him and his steadfast leadership is a good thing which tends to work to the overal benefit of the war effort.

You've got to start remember that there is good and bad in the world, and our side represents good.

"You obviously are trying to ignore the point I was making."

No, TEO, you simply made a ridiculous argument that you now wish you hadn't made. Specifically, you criticised an extremely interesting unbiased academic study because you said it falsely "shifted the blame" from the right wing to the media. But that's an idiotic comment, because (a) neither the University of Zurich nor Cambridge University have ANY bias towards the right wing, and (b) the study simply confirms the symbiotic relationship that has long existed between the western media and Islamic terrorists, and which is obvious to everyone except you.

But, hey, don't just trust ME; trust your good pal and political ally al Zarqawi, who just before his timely demise wrote that his #1 weapon against the increasing strength of the coalition would be "To use the media for spreading an effective and creative image of the resistance." HE clearly understood he was manipulating the western media, even if you don't.

Source: http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Iraq/10047347.html

"Are you saying then, that everyone should ignore terrorism, world-wide, and that will stop them."

Don't be such a simpleton. There's a HUGE ground between slavishly reporting every terrorist act on page 1 of every major paper and as the lead-in story of every newscast -- which is what the MSM has been doing for years -- and "ignoring terrorism." All the press would need to do is minimize the placement and amount of coverage they give terrorists, and the terrorists would lose their strongest weapon in their war against the west.

"If everyone just closes their ears, and we forget that there is a civil war going on in Iraq..."

Civil war my ass. What are you, historically illiterate? Can you name ONE civil war in a country of 26 million in which 12 deaths in a single day is considered BAD news? Hell, the 4-year American Civil War took 620,000 lives, and the 4-year Russian Civil War is estimated to have taken 15 MILLION.

"You amaze me with the lack of the most fundamental grasp of reality. That is like saying if the MSM would just stop reporting on rape, then the rapists will all get bored of not getting limelight and quit."

No, Trotsky, there is NO COMPARISON between a rape and a political terrorist movement. Hint: A political terrorist movement NEEDS constant press coverage to undermine the political will of its enemies and succeed. A rapist only needs to overcome the resistance of 1 person, i.e., his victim. Idiot.

"Think about what you're saying here, c'mon."

What BS. Your technique is to completely distort my arguments, and then to wonder why your distortions of my arguments make no sense. Hint: Perhaps you're intellectually incapable of responding to my actual arguments.

Mark, I have a great idea. Since the MSM greatly distorts our tremendous progress in Iraq in bringing a secure democracy to Baghdad, why don't you and Freedom 1 make a junket there? If you actually make it out of the Green Zone, you can publish a newsletter especially geared towards conservatives that support Bush's war, with highlights of all the successes of our troops. Then you guys won't have anything to complain about! You can be the good guys, shining the light of truth on a war that has been so badly misrepresented by the mainstream press.

Mark,

No, the report you cited makes no distinction between 'good' and 'bad' reporting of terrorism. It states that ANY media coverage of terrorism increases terrorism.

Still, I'm curious about your distinction about 'good' and 'bad' reporting about terrorism. According to you, its 'good' to report on President Bush talking about 9/11 and the 3000+ civilians killed, but its 'bad' to report about the latest terrorist IED and the 2 soldiers it killed. Why are civilian deaths more worthy of reporting, and why do you think reporting the death of one of our country's finest is essentially bad?

Your 'logic' is appearing more and more childish and flawed.

kritter,

Fair enough - but I'm a middle class guy who works for a living. So, get with all your lefty friends and start a collection drive for me. I'm sure a bunch of lefties will help out because they are convinced that Iraq is a catastrophe and thus sending me there is a death sentence...they are wrong, and I'll be happy to go and blog from Baghdad...

JPL,

It would be convenient to hear less about the death and destruction, atleast for your side.

Simple point, between 2001 and 2003 the number of terrorist attacks were dropping, although there was a slight increase of 8 attacks between 2002-2003, for the most part we saw a plateu of the number of attacks, and a decrease in the number of people killed, with a jump in the number injured...now wouldn't you say that after 9/11 there was a HUGE amount of press regarding terrorism of all stripes, so why did we have a reduction in the number of attacks over those years (after 2003, the State Dept. no longer published collective statistics)?

Could it be that our engagement in an illegal invasion of a nation has caused the upswing in attacks worldwide? In fact, in 2004 we saw a record high total of 651 significant attacks, with about 1900 dead and over 8,000 wounded. In 2005, the US government reported over 11,000 attacks, with only about 30% coming from Iraq.

So after our invasion we see a HUGE upswing of violence, yet only marginal gains between 2001 and 2003. Could it be just as plausible that the reporting is following the violence, and not the other way around; i'm sure there is a positive feedback loop inregards to media coverage, but our actions are allowing the organisations to be able to recruit in larger numbers.

So quit trying to make the fact that somehow the surge in violent acts is the result of increases in coverage of those acts.

Mark,

Hey man, don't be silly here. You don't wanna go Blog in Iraq. Let's be sensible, you know, just as we all know, that Iraq is a bad place if you're a white catholic guy, in fact, it's pretty bad if you're a brown, muslim dude, too... but that is beside the point.

The media wouldn't show it if there wasn't a market, so quit trying to spin this into a lefty thing, we all sit our collective fat ass down to watch the news whether it's FOX or CBS, or anything else.

The bad guys have been doing their thing for a long time, but it was a world-away; then we get our nose bloodied, and it's important to us, so important that we take our big guns and our cameras, and our shock and awe; and we go blowin stuff up, making ourselves feel good, back on the homefront, make it look like we've made some progress, with body-counts, and a new-millenium bogey-man.

We're playing the same game they are, otherwise we wouldn't need PsyOps; we are pumpin' propaganda, from both sides of the isle, global! These nut-bags are just trying to keep up...I mean for God's sake, we are solely responsible for elevating people like Zarqawi to some cult fame status, we created our own monster.

Try looking at what we are doing to ourselves here, we have a war that without escalating it to 'Nam-Era troop levels, we are going to be sitting around for a long friggin' time, the whole while instigating, by our very presence.

We could be right now mending fences in the world, using the money we are pumping into the money-pit, to fund a multi-lateral force, instead of trying to prove something to the rest of the world. Let's have a little class, and start acting like some mature adults.

In the end, we're damned if we do, damned if we don't; I think it's a product of being backed into a geo-political corner. But we can stop the bleeding, back countries like Turkey, and Jordan to fill in the vaccuum, and let them do some civil healing.

I think at the end of the day, we have a much more pressing issues with Iran and North Korea, and we need to figure out how to make the UN a little bit less dysfunctional.

"Could it be just as plausible that the reporting is following the violence, and not the other way around...."

If you actually READ the study, TEO, you'd see that the authors conclude BOTH that (a) "terror fatalities cause the media coverage of terrorism by the [NY Times]," AND that (b) "the media attention of the [NY Times] causes terrorist fatalities." In other words, the relationship is symbiotic, meaning media coverage and terrorist murders reinforce each other. One of their policy recommendations is that the media should "avoid[], as far as possible, to attribute terrorist attacks to particular groups...." Here's the article: http://www.crema-research.ch/papers/2006-08.pdf

"Could it be that our engagement in an illegal invasion of a nation has caused the upswing in attacks worldwide?"

That's an idiotic comment. Attacking an enemy almost ALWAYS results in increased attacks BY the enemy. Surrender ALWAYS works in the short term. Had FDR surrendered immediately after Pearl Harbor, tens of thousands of American lives would have been saved in the short term. So the increase in terrorist attacks after the Iraq invasion should not have come as a shock to anyone. I, for one, expected it, and recall that the Bush Administration warned us that the war against terrorism would be long.

I notice you're still repeating the "illegal invasion" lie. As you may recall, the invasion was authorized by BOTH the U.S. Congress AND the U.N. So what's your basis for arguing it was "illegal"?

JPL,

Don't be obtuse, I read the article, I just don't buy into the premise that Mark, and others are pushing, that somehow without reporting of the violence, there would be a major drop, or even a stoppage of violent acts, that somehow this is the only reason we have seen continued fighting.

First of all, the article assumes that all terrorist acts are acts which are meant to be seen by western media. Did they take into account that a vast majority of "terrorism" in Iraq is sectarian violence, aimed at other iraqis, and not US troops or media?

What about the 450 or so bombings in Bangalor last year, those are aimed at gaining sovereignty from India, not aimed at western media, they are making a political point in their nation, not trying to sway western media to their side. , or dissaude them from entering the fight.

What about the ENORMOUS amounts of terrorism in Africa, we don't hear a thing about those bombings, yet they are still going on, and actually increasing in frequency, if they aren't recieving western media coverage, then why are the numbers increasing, seems by the logic presented here, they would have been discouraged and stopped by now.

Lastly, The US congress can pass any numbers of laws and resolutions it wants, but the sway of those laws and resolutions goes about as far as international waters, and not an inch farther. The US congress can pass a law that everyone in the world has to wear brown shoes, but noone has to obey it, you see why our assertion that going to war was only recognized in the US? On the international stage, the law is made and judged within the confines of the UN and its SecCouncil. Now res. 1441 was passed, threatening actions if Saddam didn't allow inspectors back into the country, he did, we then took it upon ourselves (after floating another resolution, and then pulling it for fear of China, Russia, and France veto-ing it) to unilaterally attacking a sovereign nation, so as you can see, we did not have apporval from the UN, which we are still a signitor of the charter, so therefore, by the rules we agreed to, this war was illegal...can you understand that?