How enemy plays the media

Jennifer Harper:

Terrorists use the press and public relations as weapons, said a study released Wednesday by Arizona State University.
"People are surprised the jihadis think of the media as a weapon," said Steven Corman, director of the school's Consortium for Strategic Communication and a Defense Department consultant on communications networks and counterterrorism.
His study analyzed almost 300 al Qaeda statements, letters and other documents, many of them captured during U.S. military actions in the Middle East and recently declassified by the Pentagon.
The report found that jihadist operations use consistent patterns of outreach that establish them socially and religiously, generate public sympathy and intimidate opponents. Threats, in fact, are part of terrorist "talking points."
"Jihadis pursue these strategies using sophisticated, modern methods of communications and public relations," Mr. Corman said. "There's evidence in the documents that jihadis segment audiences and adapt their message to the audience."
This week, audio and video messages from Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi were posted on the Internet and immediately picked up by international news organizations.
The report cites similar demonstrations as the "ideological machinery" of terrorist organizations, which maintain formal information committees and are adept at using print, broadcast and online resources on a global basis. The Internet provides such a promising terrorist forum that Mr. Corman suggests the United States create a permanent "geek battalion" to disrupt jihadist message boards and Web sites.

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The killings of non combatants is strickly for media play because they have no military significance. In other words, by playing up the mass murcers the media is feeding the enemy war effort and insuring that there will be more mass murder for them to play up. If the media would play up the wickedness of the attackers, rather than the fact of the attack is would make them more counter productive. Right now the enemy is playing the meida like a drum and the media seems to be embracing that role.