The Obama Administration is moving into a new phase in the War On Terror: Ignore them and they might go away. In a speech in Bangladesh, Secretary of State John Kerry said the following:
“Remember this: No country is immune from terrorism. It’s easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But if you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”
Does Kerry realize how stupid he sounds? Which terrorist act should the media “not have covered”? 9/11? The Fort Hood attack? The Benghazi embassy attack? The London double decker Bus and Underground attack? The Paris concert attack? The San Bernardino shootings? The Brussels Airport attack? The Orlando nightclub shootings? I could fill up this entire page with the list of terror attacks in just the last eight years–and we aren’t supposed to report on any of those? Could you imagine driving by the scene of any of these incidents and think “What happened here? I didn’t hear anything about this in the news. It must be just a training exercise or something!”
A news blackout of terrorism would benefit the Obama Administration by making it “appear” that their “strategy” to contain the menace is effective. “You haven’t heard about any attacks have you?” would be a very effective argument for the low-information voter that makes up the majority of Americans nowadays. But it doesn’t address the root cause of Islamic terrorism.
Could you imagine if Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association had said the same thing about media coverage of non-terror-related mass shootings? That is all every news network would be talking about today–with huge headlines NRA CHIEF TRIES TO STIFLE MEDIA COVERAGE OF MASS SHOOTINGS!! Yet, one could make the same argument that media coverage of each successive shooting plants a seed in the mind of the next attacker.
We in the media could probably spend more time covering the Obama Administration efforts to combat Islamic terrorism–especially when it comes to making sure that “people don’t know what’s going on”.
