Not helping anybody
Remember the ricin ring that never was and the chemical vest (was it sarin, cyanide or anthrax flavour?) that was never found?
Now we have the red mercury that didn’t exist. This is what you get when newspapers grow bored of the drudge of merely reporting the news and decide they’d rather make it instead. Hopefully the poor sods acquitted in today’s judicial joke will escape the fate of the Algerians acquitted in the ricin risibility - they were swept up again pretty quickly afterwards despite the lack of any new evidence against them.
In the mean time, somebody somewhere is probably cooking up a genuine, ostentatious outside-the-box terrorist spectacular. If it were to hit the news prematurely they’re safe in the knowledge that, after all the comedy capers of recent months, the public will think it’s just another wild story got up by newspapers chasing sales and police officers being led by the nose by idiotic single-sources and wanting to be seen to be Doing Something.
Or not. When you think about the perennial nature of the media thrashings over these story, you could surmise that the public has an insatiable appetite for this we’re-all-gonna-die sub-James Bond bullshit. That’s if you believe newspapers reflect the views of their readers and not vice versa. (Discuss.)
Maybe as the truism goes, people just like to be scared (preferably from a distance). It’s the Terrorist Threat as penny dreadful. The War Against Terror as Commando comics. The papers, never having gone broke playing to the lowest common denominator, play up to it. Instead of picking up your Pan Book of Horror Stories, buy the Sun. Does this stuff play well in the provinces, away from existential London-based terrorist plots, do you think?
Update: Tim Worstall has more:
How in hell was anyone prosecuted for attempting to provide a rare radioactive material when said rare radioactive material does not exist? Who authorised this prosecution?
BTW, no, you don’t get compensation for being held on remand for two years.
Posted on July 25th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
| See also • The War Against Terror: Licence to chill • On the level? • Terror victims as a resource |
Permalink • Trackback • Subscribe By Email • Print This Post • • • |
|
Filed under T.W.A.T., The home front |
The symbiotic nature of terrorism and the media seems not to have registered at all in the minds of most of the people who actually work in the media (with honourable exceptions, of course). The idiots at News Int are certainly the worst offenders.
As to the reason why fear sells, in this context I don’t think that we want to be scared necessarily. My view is that fear stimulates a pretty basic instinct and people therefore react in a pretty basic way. You see a scary headline in the NotW and it tickles your subconscious instincts enough to provoke a desire to find out more. “One NotW please”. You don’t want to be scared; you want to aquire the information to try to make yourself safe. That’s my take on it anyway.
And fear not. Up here in the northern provinces, we’ve got our own set of loons to remind us that we too face the possibility of violent death at any moment. David Capitanchik, who’s in that report, is a serial offender.
I had forgotten about the Red Mercury plot. Any chance someone could enter it into the list Wikipedia? List of Terrorist incidents in UK
You’ll note I have one of the other names correct: “The Wood Green No-Ricin Plot”, because there was no ricin, so calling it a ricin plot is misleading. On that page you can also enjoy reading all the other no-ricin reports that happened in the same week, in Bournemouth and Paris.
How about the flour bomb bombers of the 21/7? Attempted murder, or a demonstartive act?
Their case was due to be heard in October but the latest news is perhaps next year.
43 arrests were made in connection to these non-events, compared to zero after 7th July. 17 await trial compared to zero after 7th July. Strange?
Julian - I would put these in myself, but have yet to work out wikis:
1894 Greenwich bomb
1936 Pen-y-Berth attack by Welsh nationalists
1966 Clywedog valley bomb (also probably Welsh nationalists)
All three often forgotten.