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In 1985, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher spoke about terrorism at the annual convention of the American Bar Association. Following a recent high-profile hijacking of a TWA passenger forced to land in Beirut that had received lavish media coverage, Thatcher urged that news organizations "must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend."
It's a dilemma that news organizations have grappled with for many decades since. Terrorist attacks are, of course, news, but terrorists also depend on "the oxygen of publicity" provided by the media to spread accounts of their violence.
But what happens when today's terrorists are the media? In the past, terrorists had to rely on the media to get their messages out, but now they can completely control their own message, from making their own content to ensuring its widespread distribution.
In a new twist of the past three years, ISIS and other jihadist militants are now reporting on their own bloody work in real time. Consider that ISIS produces lavish TV productions, filmed professionally in high definition -- of everything from its murder of civilians, to profiles of its heroic fighters, to the supposedly idyllic life that can be lived under its purportedly utopian rule. The group also has its own de facto news agency, Amaq, that credibly reports on ISIS' own atrocities.
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