The media cycle of violence in Iraq

Richard Morin, Washington Post:

More ink equals more blood, claim two economists who say that newspaper coverage of terrorist incidents leads directly to more attacks.

It's a macabre example of win-win in what economists call a "common-interest game," say Bruno S. Frey of the University of Zurich and Dominic Rohner of Cambridge University.

"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."

The researchers counted direct references to terrorism between 1998 and 2005 in the New York Times and Neue Zuercher Zeitung, a respected Swiss newspaper. They also collected data on terrorist attacks around the world during that period. Using a statistical procedure called the Granger Causality Test, they attempted to determine whether more coverage directly led to more attacks.

The results, they said, were unequivocal: Coverage caused more attacks, and attacks caused more coverage -- a mutually beneficial spiral of death that they say has increased because of a heightened interest in terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001.

One partial solution: Deny groups publicity by not publicly naming the attackers, Frey said. But won't they become known anyway through informal channels such as the Internet?

Not necessarily, Frey said. "Many experiences show us that in virtually all cases several groups claimed responsibility for a particular terrorist act. I would like the same rule that obtains within a country: Nobody can be called a criminal -- in our case a terrorist -- if this has not been established by a court of law."

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This is a point I have been making for some time. The attacks on non combatants in Iraq have no military significance, i.e. they do not change the correlation of forces. The terrorist have said that the purpose of these attacks is to get the media to report them and blame the US and its allies for not stopping them. The media seems to follow the terrorist's script to the letter. If they were not reported, or were given minimal media attention, there would be no benefit to the terrorist in doing them.

In terms of an insurgency, the attacks on non combatants are counter productive because they drive people away from the insurgency. There is a reason why Zarqawi's death was greeted with applause in Iraq and why the Iraqis were upset with Hamas for trying to make a martyr out of the terrorist thug. The media could also discourage these killings of non combatants by focusing on the wickedness of the enemy. For some reason the media has adopted a tone of neutrality when it comes to enemy actions. They have no outrage at the outrageous conduct. Outrage is saved for hazing at Abu Ghraid or for allegations against Marines, but never for the conduct of the enemy. The media does share some blame for the blood of civilians. In fact the media is probably responsible for more civilian deaths than all the Marines in Haditha. Hat tip to Stephen Spruiell at Media Blog.