strategy and the end of network use of hostage videos is both a productive question for future research and—until a definitive answer is determined—a good enough reason to keep any subsequent hostage material off network air, as a hedge.[1] If these groups believed the footage would not be used by the networks, that certainly does not necessarily mean such attacks would stop. This is propaganda footage, and there are multiple audiences for it, including their own followers, who view it over the Internet. It is also uploaded to the Internet for recruitment purposes. But it surely does not hurt for the terrorists to know that their footage will get a wider dissemination—to one of the audiences they care most about—than they could ever achieve on their own.
But the press seems to be an institution without any institutional memory. For them, a lesson learned but forgotten after TWA 847 was: don't let terrorists take control of network air. A corollary, although it was not phrased this way at the time, don't let terrorists air their propaganda material without comment or critique. For the modern era, it seems that a critical lesson ought be: Certainly don't let them do so without transparency.
What makes this all the more amazing is that in the 1980s, after some high profile decisions by networks covering terrorist events that were widely considered controversial or even of extremely questionable journalistic ethics, the networks agonized over how to handle their coverage of terrorist events. The coverage of the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 was widely denounced as "Terrorvision" and a "media circus," and many in the media conceded that their performance had been less than their finest hour.[2] The hijacked plane was ultimately brought to Beirut. Once there, the hostages were split up, with some kept on the plane
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- ↑ When Carroll was kidnapped, her identity was effectively "embargoed," kept out of press reports, for 48 hours, at the request of the Monitor. This seems entirely reasonable. (By the same token, when two Fox News personnel were kidnapped in Gaza, the story was downplayed at the request of Fox News, on the theory—apparently correct—that if less was made of the story, the kidnappers would conclude they had taken men of little value and eventually release them.) The question is how prepared the press is to participate in such embargoes when the victims are not reporters. See Jack Shafer, "The Carroll Kidnapping: What Information Should Reporters Suppress?" Slate.com, January 10, 2006, available from www.slate.com/id/2134093/.
- ↑ John Dillin, "NBC News President Defends, But Revises, Terrorism Coverage, Christian Science Monitor, August 5, 1985, p. 3; Eleanor Randolph, "Networks Turn Eye on Themselves: In Crisis, Restraint Viewed as Important but Dismissed as Impossible," Washington Post, June 30, 1985, p. A-25; America's Ordeal by Television: With the Beirut Hostages Free, Videoland Forgets Oh So Quickly," Washington Post, July 2, 1985, p. C1. On a related instance, NBC's interview of the lead Achille Lauro hijacker, which they secured on the grounds that they keep his location secret, see Philip Geyelin, "How to Protect a Terrorist," Washington Post, May 19, 1986, p. A-15.
