Both the act of terrorism and the reporting of terrorism are political.
Tuesday’s suicide bombing in Istanbul was featured in Breaking News and took second position on the BBC News website that evening, but was a mere footnote on the world news page by Wednesday morning (hours before the atrocity in Paris took place).
By that time it was known that the female suicide bomber was a member of the Marxist DHKP-C.
Though one suspects that the horror is broadly the same whether you are ripped to pieces by an Ideological Leftist, a White Supremacist, a Muslim Extremist or a Provincial Separatist, the vast majority of terrorist plots in this country and worldwide are not considered newsworthy. [1. According to Europol statistics, Islamists were responsible for 0.7% of failed, foiled and completed terrorist plots across Europe between 2006 and 2013.]
News, after all, is not a natural account of everything that is happening in the world. News is a political and commercial construct. It is a product.
Last modified: 10 January 2015
