What is the media’s responsibility during a terror alert? Should it whip up fear to attract more readers, listeners and viewers? Should it exploit the incident to foment xenophobia, suspend civil liberties and seek revenge on ethnic groups vaguely linked to the incident? Should they assist the terrorists in creating mass panic?
Of course not. Yet this is just what the UK media – backed by police and politicians — appears to be doing in response to the terror scares in London and Glasgow.
The London Evening Standard led the way: “Bid to Kill 1,700 in West End” (Friday’s headline, June 29). The Mirror on Saturday followed this up: “The Baghdad-style bomb could have killed and injured hundreds, laying waste to people and property in a 300-yard radius.” The Sun: “London’s worst ever bomb carnage was foiled yesterday…”
Things hardly cooled over the weekend. In breathless tones, Monday’s Independent talked of the bombs “exploding compressed gas in the cylinders at 20,000 feet per second” and “spewing out nails for a hundred feet“, had they exploded. The Times had: ” [The terrorists] intended to cause mass casualties.”
But buried away were other reports painting a very different picture.
The Independent on Sunday: “The London car bombers could not have destroyed the Tiger Tiger club and killed people in it, experts said last night. … It emerged that the Haymarket gas and nail bomb was almost certainly not big enough to have brought down the building, as previously reported. It would have killed and maimed within 100 meters.
“Although deadly – the ambulance crew and any revellers on the pavement would have been killed – it would not have caused serious damage to the club or brought down the building.”
A report headlined “Gas canister bomb ‘an amateur job’” published on the Guardian’s website, but not in the newspaper, quoted an explosives expert: “Putting [nails] on the floor is an incompetent way of building a bomb. They would go straight into the ground. … The main impact of the device would be in the economic disruption caused by closing off the normally bustling shops, restaurants and businesses of central London.”
Friday’s Newsnight was even more guarded about the threat posed by these bombs, pointing out how difficult it was to make a car bomb like this actually work. The programme emphasised that the police said that the bombs were only “potentially viable”, as opposed to actually “viable”.
Newsnight: “There was no explosive in this car”
“In this case it is an important distinction,” Newsnight’s diplomatic editor Mark Urban explained. “My understanding is there was no explosive in this car. To have a fireball effect with propane gas cylinders you really need to break them immediately at very high speed with a military or commercial type high explosive. That was not there.
“It seems that the technique that was going to be used was simply to turn on the tap, let the car fill with gas and then try and ignite it using a flammable material that was also found in the car. So one has to question whether some of this analysis of Iraq-type bombs is really appropriate at all because in Iraq insurgents have access to hundreds of shells, large quantities of military grade high explosive, with which of course these similar ingredients, gas bottles, nails, can be turned into extremely lethal devices. In this case I don’t believe that was right.
“Instead I think there was an intention to hurt people. Clearly that’s obvious. … But equally perhaps there was a realisation that if it didn’t work, politicians, the media, would go through the motions as they usually do after an incident like this and amplify any effect that just placing those devices there might have had.”
Adding to this analysis, ex-CIA agent Larry Johnson told Keith Olbermann on MSNBC cable television: “This is not one of the truck bombs or car bombs we see going off in Iraq – what’s really striking about this is that you had two non-bombs in London when we had at least five bombs in Baghdad in which U.S. soldiers were killed in one of those, so I think it’s just out of proportion – this was an incendiary, this was not a high explosive.”
Johnson said that had the gas been ignited properly, there would have been a loud boom that would have split the tank but that no projectiles would have even escaped the car: “If someone was within 20, 30 feet of it they would have ear damage but not much more.”
We have been here before
The media should strive to balance the need to present accurate information to warn the public of a genuine risk, while dampening the terrorists’ goal of producing widespread panic. In this instance, the UK media have failed yet again to provide a pubic service, instead serving the needs of those who want to manipulate public opinion in favour of more wars, more clampdowns and more limits on civil liberties. By doing so, they have also played into the hands of the jihadist murderers.
We have been here before. In the aftermath of the 7/7 London bombings, columnist Simon Jenkins issued a stinging attack on the panic-mongering of the police and press: “Apart from the gratuitous damage to public confidence and business, why stoke the very fears, hatreds and antagonisms which the bombers want stoked?”
He continued: “The truth is that those who want to subvert freedom can always rely on “useful idiots,” a phrase Lenin is said to have used of liberal apologists for extremists (but never did). Modern terrorism neatly inverts this attribution. It relies on “useful idiots” of the right to exploit any terrorist incident to foment xenophobia, suspend civil liberties and seek revenge on any ethnic group vaguely linked to the incident. …
“The useful idiots demand new powers, new restrictions and new measures against the Muslim community. Above all they declare ‘war on terror,’ turn murdered into warriors and incite Islam to proclaim jihad in response.”
And finally, if we really want to get events into perspective: “‘Up to 80 civilians dead’ after US air strikes in Afghanistan“
P.S. The new government appears to be showing admirable constraint in refusing to blame Muslims for the bomb attempts and avoiding “war on terror” rhetoric. But the media are already ratcheting up the pressure for another bout of Muslim-baiting. Is Hassan Butt another useful idiot?
By Dave C
