Reporting Terrorism and The Changing Face of the Media
Britain Under Attack
In 2017 it was felt that Britain was being ambushed after a series of terror attacks appearing within a timeframe of four months, one of them being the deadliest terror attack the UK had experienced since the 2005 London Underground bombing. On the 22nd May at the end of a concert by multiple number one artist Ariana Grande the 21,000 capacity Manchester Arena was bombed targeting fans consisting mostly of children and young adults. At 10:33 pm the police were called to the explosion and later discovered a suicide bomber had killed 22 people and injured 59. Within the midst of the tragedy the US singer flew by private jet to her home in Florida and her Dangerous Women tour was suspended until June, with concerts in London, Belgium, Poland, and Germany canceled. Alongside that the concert by Take That for the following three nights scheduled at Manchester Arena was also canceled.
Just a few months prior on the 22nd March an attacker drove into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge using a hire car and then proceeded to stab to death a police officer whilst running toward the Houses of Parliament. Killing 5 people and injuring 50 the terrorist was also shot dead to prevent the situation from worsening. A third terrorist attack took place on 3rd June with London again the target with a similar tactic to the March atrocity. This time three men wearing fake explosive vests hit pedestrians with a white van and then stabbed people on London Bridge and in Borough Market along with people in nearby pubs and restaurants. It took an extraordinary 50 rounds of bullets fired by 8 armed police officers to kill the three attackers, only 8 minutes after the first emergency call was made but already, 7 people were dead and 48 injured with people fearing for the worst and barricading themselves in the restaurants and pubs.
Traditional News to Contemporary News
‘In the traditional world, newspapers, corporations, government or other types of leading organisations simply has to give out information, and people would consume it by reading or looking at it’ and this is still the way to some extent despite only 38% getting their news from traditional print newspapers, a figure that continues to decline. Reflecting these horrifying events newspapers rushed to change their front pages before the next day’s publication. Their late editions displayed headlines such as “TERROR AT TEEN CONCERT” from the UK’s Sun. In today’s modern world, social media and the internet allows for local news distributors to inform international agencies at the click of a button, meaning newspapers across the world can change their front pages also. For example, Toronto Sun in Canada — “MANCHESTER MASSACRE”, New York Times — “FATAL CONCERT BLAST CALLED TERROR” and O Globo in Brazil — “Terror returns to haunt England”. This would have been impossible if it wasn’t for contemporary technology.
It is increasingly the norm that everyone carries a smartphone with instant access to the latest information which makes it vital that newspapers and TV channels have online news coverage too. This allows them to publish important information that is permanent and can be seen at any time in any place by anyone. A video was posted on the BBC’s website with a series of clips that showed how the events played out at the Manchester bombing along with the text at the bottom that told the story, it also included interviews with some of the eyewitnesses to show the devastating effects. The internet is also a vital resource to publish messages from the government, Andy Burnham the Mayor of Greater Manchester said “this was an evil act” and a video of Prime Minister Theresa May was published saying “The attack stands out for its appalling, sickening cowardice. Deliberately targeting innocent, defenceless children and young people”.
Journalists have new criteria of following eyewitness reporting from social media to quickly recognise new and serious events that need the media’s immediate attention. Jeremy Bowen believes that “the best idea you get of a situation is if you go there yourself” and therefore when they realise the severity of an event news organisations send journalists straight to the scene. Another one of journalists’ main roles is constantly updating the website with the world’s latest news, this is shown with a breaking news article published, along with a live stream onto television of the London Bridge attack within 20 minutes of it happening.
“Newspapers have a legacy of breaking news and uncovering stories of historic proportion, yet they are losing ground to a generation of consumers embracing digital and mobile alternatives”, with this being said newspapers have caught up with younger audiences and found what might draw in larger audiences, and therefore expanding from print news to posting breaking news stories along with verified videos of incidents of the London Bridge attack on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat to give audiences a reliable and trustworthy source of news.
Eyewitnesses to be new Journalists for Social Media News
Despite still needing traditional journalists for this reason, it has become more prominent that eyewitnesses are becoming citizen reporters, the use of smartphones and social media allows for sharing video and image content within seconds of incidents happening. This is shown by Brad Myer an eyewitness of the London Bridge attack who took a selfie in the spot where the van came in just minutes after and a second picture was taken of the aftermath, he posted both on Twitter immediately. The posts then began to accumulate with live Facebook videos of people running and gunshots being fired along with images on Twitter of the attackers. Half of people are now using social media for news, therefore these posts go viral and expose people to gore and panic that they are not used to after previously experiencing news that is filtered and refined before being printed or published. Within the first few hours of these crisis events, it may be deemed that social media perhaps hinders response to terror attacks as posts by the public present fear and helplessness which amplifies terrorist messages through “the internet where terrorism breeds” described by Theresa May in her response to the London Bridge attack. Although there is a suggestion that social media is a great tool during a state of emergency to ‘support crisis response efforts, exchange information, and express interpretation of unfolding events’. For both the Manchester bombing and the London Bridge attack the police used Twitter to update and advise people throughout the current crisis which instantly is spread to wide audiences.
Twitter has also become a favourable platform to help individuals speak to the world with 708,147 Twitter postings after the Manchester bombing. The platform brought the world together at times like this with powerful messages of solidarity using the hashtag londonbridge. Whilst in the UK hashtags such as; missingmanchester and roomformanchester were used to offer the Ariana Grande concert goers a place to stay if they were stranded. These heartfelt messages and proposals spoken through social media brought countries together at times of crisis which news companies find difficult to do.
Social Media leading to more fake news
Despite the goodwill these messages online also boost trolls, leading social media to become subject to fake news and misinformation. A theory proposed ‘novel information that is introduced to fill the void of knowledge might be inaccurate, false or even misleading’ this was shown during the six hours after the Manchester bombing, where there were 139,023 tweets produced and 18 different information frames were established. In the first 90 minutes of the bombing, 6 out of 18 frames were classified as rumours of which one turned out to be true and the other five were misinformation such as; a second bomb or gunmen walking into Royal Oldham Hospital. It is said that these rumours mostly occur within the early stages and then decrease over time, this may be because at first the only details the public have is from eyewitness reporters also known as sense breakers, and later we receive accurate information from trustworthy traditional news which debunks misinformation created on social media. Confirmed by statistics which show that individuals believe TV (62%) and newspaper (58%) give accuracy, trustworthiness, and impartiality news compared to social media at only 37%. With the new and constantly developing technology, society is said to be slowly detaching itself from professional media and instead are heading towards media that is not up to journalistic standards. This can then create scandal and conspiracy theories as we have seen from the 2017 terror attacks.
Negative Effects technological News plays
Unfortunately, both TV and social media news have a part to play in helping terrorists achieve their goal by inducing fear and anxiety into the public and the long term psychological damage caused to those affected by these extreme events. The visual world is continuously manufactured by the media where it seems impossible to escape the stream of images and videos that circulate the internet on multiple platforms after the crisis and are, therefore, transmitted into the daily lives of individuals. With Ariana Grande suffering from PTSD, the likelihood of this also affecting the children and young adults that attended the concert are high as 80% of social media users are between the ages 18–34. ‘We are in a world were narrative comes undone and where the ‘real’ seems to have no sense of meaning beyond the repetition of the horrifying event’ holding social media responsible for the constant reminder. With it being said a greater direct and media-based exposure is linked to greater acute stress after the event, and that people should limit repeated exposure to distributing images which can elicit PTSD and lead to negative psychological and physical outcomes, which can be hard when people scroll on social media not knowing what will come up next. But these effects don’t just stop with the people at the scene of the crime, researchers believe that media-based exposure to traumatic events alone can also have long-term impacts.
Of course, the media can also have positive effects on mental health around these events occurring again and again on social media such as Ariana Grande’s Instagram message on the anniversary of the Manchester Arena bombing “the sadness and tremendous heaviness of the anniversary, not a day goes by that this doesn’t affect you and all of us still, I will be thinking of you all week and weekend, my heart, thoughts, prayers are with you always” this spoke to all that suffered from the event plus her 216 million followers. Despite the crisis being reflected upon by remembrance messages, images, and videos posted on social media this does also have a negative effect as it has been said that ‘the media can “endorse” terrorism by glamourising it’.
2001 News vs. 2017 News
Finally, comparing the number 1 ranked worst terror attack in history compared to the 2nd worst in the UK there is a massive difference in the way the media responded between 2001 and 2017. After 4 jetliners were hijacked with one flying into the pentagon and two straight into the Twin Towers within minutes the World Trade Centre had collapsed to the ground and 2,977 were dead, the terror attack that changed the world, 9/11. On September 11th 2001 the world was introduced to ‘a new form of terrorism that sparked a major debate over the definition of terror’, through fear America put up its guard with the US president George W. Bush at the time speaking out to the nation which ultimately gave the public a negative perception of Muslims in general and that America was now at war. This message exactly was then portrayed on newspaper front pages, for example; New York Daily News — “IT’S WAR” and The Daily Telegraph in London — “War on America”. Despite a lot less misinformation than today, America gave a message that everyone needs to be terrified of terrorism, now set in stone years on countries put the same guard up and in 2017 the UK displayed similar front page news e.g. ‘ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY’ even though the events happened 16 years apart. This perspective could also be counteracted with the view that ‘news coverage can meet journalist standards of ‘balance, ‘truth’, and ‘objectivity’ in cases of extreme political conflict’ as spoken about previously. Despite the similarity, there are many differences in traditional news with news spreading faster than ever, the world can find out about a crisis in a matter of minutes just by the use of the internet and social media. Although in 2001 some first world countries like the UK were able to gather enough information to quickly put it on their front pages when it came to the 2017 attacks the whole world knew straight away with digital front pages and social media displaying the crisis in countries as far away as Brazil.
‘Today’s audience expects to be able to choose what they read and most believe they should be able to contribute content and opinions too’ this is shown in previous discussions above but this wasn’t the case in 2001 people were only shown what was happening through the news and with much confusion on live television over what had actually happened with initially people thinking that a pilot had accidentally lost control. Compared to 2017 these crisis events are now live streamed on multiple platforms by both news organisations and individuals. As a result people tend to leap to conclusions and spread fake news by the use of modern technology in contemporary times that alternately didn’t exist back in the early noughties.
