Politico (9/20/16) frames the terrorism issue as “who has the upper hand.”
The media’s tendency to focus on horserace issues—who’s up and who’s down, what the cosmetics are of an event rather than the substance—is routinely derided by media critics, and mocking it has become something of an election year tradition. But one 2016 topic in particular, terrorism, has become the hot horserace topic of the year in a way that goes beyond the silly to the potentially damaging:
- Clinton, Trump Jockey Over Who Would Best Fight Terrorists (WNBC, 9/20/16)
- Who Has the Upper Hand on Terrorism, Clinton or Trump? (Politico, 9/20/16)
- Terror Threat Clash: Trump, Clinton Accuse Each Other of Boosting Enemy (Fox News, 9/19/16)
- Clinton, Trump Spar Over Terrorism in Wake of Latest Attacks (USA Today, 9/20/16)
Something missing from these reports is any discussion of the relative danger of terrorism. The reporters begin with the premise that voters are afraid of it, never challenging the underlying rationality of those fears.
The reality is that terrorism remains, objectively, a very minor threat. (One is 82 times more likely to be killed falling out of bed than by a terrorist.) But by framing the issue as an urgent danger, with two candidates “dueling” over opposing ways of addressing this menace, the media further inflate terrorism’s importance. Can one even imagine Trump and Clinton “jockeying” for position on climate change, or violence against women and LGBT communities, or lowering heart disease—all of which, statistically, are far, far more dangerous than terrorism?
This isn’t a new problem, of course. In nine Democratic primary debates, for example, the moderators asked a total of 30 questions about terrorism or ISIS, and not one question about poverty (FAIR.org, 5/27/16). (A 2011 study by Columbia’s school of public health estimated that 4.5 percent of all deaths in the United States are attributable to poverty.)
Polls show people are indeed increasingly worried about terrorism—and about “Islamic fundamentalism,” with which it is often conflated in media discussions. (Republicans’ fear of “Islamic fundamentalism” is now higher than immediately after 9/11.)
But such worries are fueled, at least in part, on the media’s outsized coverage. Since 2006, according to the tabulations of USA Today, there have been 320 incidents of mass murder in the United States—incidents in which four or more people were killed, not including perpetrators. During that time, there have been five such attacks carried out by people apparently motivated by Islamicist ideology: the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the 2015 Chattanooga shooting, the 2015 San Bernardino attack and the 2016 Orlando nightclub massacre. Two other mass murder incidents—the 2012 Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting and the 2015 Charleston church massacre—were carried out by right-wing extremists. These seven potentially terrorist attacks represent about 2 percent of the mass murder events in the United States over a little more than the last decade.
But media don’t just cover terrorism, they engage in meta-terrorism—the terror that comes from the gratuitous or excessive coverage of stories that don’t actually involve terrorism, but rather potential or staged terrorism, or ISIS propaganda repackaged as news. Note that in none of the following “terror” stories did any terrorism actually occur:
- Online Posts Show ISIS Eyeing Mexican Border, Says Law Enforcement Bulletin (Fox News, 8/24/14)
- FBI Director Comey: Several ISIS-Inspired July 4 Attacks Foiled (NBC, 7/9/15)
- Smugglers Busted Trying to Sell Nuclear Material to ISIS (AP, 10/7/15)
- ISIS Threatens NYC in New Propaganda Video (New York Post, 11/18/15)
- A Freeway Terror Attack Is the ‘Nightmare We Worry About,’ Law Enforcers Say (LA Times, 12/21/15)
- Feds: New York Man Was Planning ISIS Attack on New Year’s Eve (CNN, 1/2/16)
- ISIS Planning ‘Enormous and Spectacular Attacks,’ Anti-Terror Chief Warns (Guardian, 3/7/16)
- ISIL Plotting to Use Drones for Nuclear Attack on West (Telegraph, 4/1/16)
- ISIS Nuclear Attack in Europe Is a Real Threat, Say Experts (Independent, 6/7/16)
The list could go on and on—with stories involving the FBI foiling terrorist “plots” of their own making, “experts” coming up with hypothetical terror attacks, or the outright dissemination of ISIS propaganda. The constant drum beat of meta-terror acts as an accelerant, taking each spark of actual terrorism and turning it into an inferno of panic.
The failure of those pieces on Trump and Clinton’s “jockeying” for position on the issue of ISIS terrorism to note that the perception of fear does not equal the actual threat–that we are still far more likely to be harmed by dozens of other threats than terrorism—is in line with horserace journalism’s prioritization of optics over substance, a phenomenon that’s that much more toxic when dealing with a subject whose optics are skewed by racism and irrationality.
To the extent that there is any dampening of fears, it comes from the Clinton camp, in the context of countering Trump’s brand of outright xenophobia. The Overton window has narrowed to a choice between overwrought ISIS panic and overwrought ISIS panic that’s overtly racist.
Reporting that reached beyond the two campaigns’ anti-ISIS talking points, and horserace analysis of their attempts to “out-position” each other, would serve the public by putting our fears of terrorism in perspective.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
For two hundred years, we’ve had Kylling Kluck, Chicken Little, Henny Penny, Chicken Licken and Chicken Kluk warning that the heavens were falling and leading the terrified to disaster. Just stir in some Edward Bernays, Joseph Goebbels and 21st century technology and you have the perfect recipe for a pair of major party candidates running a campaign, the vomitous stench of which is fouling the nostrils of thinking people, around the world. If this were a cautionary fairy tale, it might be funny; in a world with nuclear weapons, global warming and the pandemic corporatization of government functions, it’s anything but humorous.
Maybe the sky really is falling.
It would be nice if FAIR would act as if #JillStein and the #GreenParty existed. Reading your publication, who would know?
You conclude this article with: “Reporting that reached beyond the two campaigns’ anti-ISIS talking points, and horserace analysis of their attempts to “out-position” each other, would serve the public by putting our fears of terrorism in perspective.”
Do you even read what you write?
This piece by Johnson is excellent, as usual. I don’t see anything wrong with his last paragraph (after rereading it twice). So, why don’t you tell us what you think about it.
First of all, thanks to all the commenters for saying excellent things about this article.
Like TeeJay,I think the article is excellent too, well stated, well founded, but will have almost zero impact on the sources of the narratives it documents. Brian, you make a good and important point. There ARE serious candidates out there who don’t buy into anti-terror panic-mongering. Both Jill Stein and Gary Johnson reject this kind of bogeyman bullshit. They shout it out. So why isn’t FAIR honing in on why their messages are continually and expressly suppressed? Ask the media execs, demand answers, and document their pathetic excuses.
I don’t know about Gary Johnson, but Jill Stein is going to be at the first debate at Hofstra U — but out in the street. She’ll probably be arrested if she makes the effort to confront the established order there. She’s asked tens of thousands of supporters to put their bodies on the line there. But basically, only they know. The news media are aware of those plans but they keep mum. FAIR, make sure you expose why the media have decided that Donkeys and Elephants are the only mammals in the barnyard, ignoring the very human beings who are there too, in constant danger of being trampled.
Also missing is the most powerful anti-terrorism intervention: A major revision of U.S. government policies towards the mideast region (and why stop there, the ambition for resource domination causes trouble all over the globe). The direct interventions and the sponsorship of isolated, anti-democratic governments, of course the weapons sales (often supported by U.S. aid so the money goes through a “laundering” process — from the U.S. taxpayer through the foreign government, back to U.S. weapons manufacturers for the sales which the aid says must be from U.S. firms).
Another missing point is the degree to which the U.S. people who have done the attacks were “radicalized” by the Islamophobic remarks, threats, and at times active persecution here in the U.S.
For a political figure and candidate — or even big media — to focus on those simple (but not easy) “anti-terrorism” measures would be a very long stretch. Not only does it mean opening the imperial policies and ambitions to question, it also means systematic thought on a subject which has life mainly because, as the FAIR article shows, the mind is built to overestimate hazard, particularly when the hazard is blasted at us through sensationalist media and politics.
So let’s all keep talking about the missing pieces, not just the statistical issue FAIR points out, but also all the causative factors.
With fear in favor
Keeping real issues out of the public’s view is one of several disastrous consequences of that estate sale some years ago — the Fourth Estate.
Reporting unique to FAIR. Thank Jah journalism of the truth, by the truthful, for the truth-seeking has not perished from the face of the earth.