SIR – Recent events
in France exposed us to a familiar media sequence. The top item on radio or
television news reports a terrorist atrocity, then the ambulance sirens wail,
shocked witnesses are interviewed, decent people leave their flowers, heads of
state express their disgust. The terrorists get precisely what they want:
maximum publicity (which they cannot distinguish from notoriety).
Must
we go on playing their game? In a democracy such outrages must, I suppose, be
reported, but should they be dramatised by such full treatment?
And
shouldn’t public comment move quickly beyond expressions of disgust, on to
discussing the futility of it all: not just the deaths and maimings, but the
resultant threat to all those who can plausibly be identified with the
terrorists, and the impossibility of winning support from any more than a tiny
crazed minority for a cause which doesn’t even bother to justify such methods?
Mere exclamations of shock and disgust surely do not now suffice.
Brian
Harrison
London W2. Telegraph.
London W2. Telegraph.
