Unwitting Partner?

The kidnapping of Aldo Moro and the murders of the Israeli citizens were grimly convenient for the two-hour PBS special Terrorism: The World at Bay. It was a live broadcast, but it had been scheduled long before these bloody events. They gave the show urgency. They did not, unfortunately, add any illumination to its inquiry.

There is something a little odd, not to say batty, about a television show on the problem of terrorism. It is a bit like a tabloid headline on the problem of sensationalism. Television, as several of the experts who were interviewed remarked, has contributed heavily to the problem. What, one wonders, can it offer toward a solution, apart from shutting up? “We are partners of the terrorists,” an Israeli TV reporter confessed. A BBC official disputed this in the name of the public’s right to know, but Conor Cruise O’Brien sensibly replied that there is a great difference between reporting the facts and milking the spectacle.

JS

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Joseph Sobran

The kidnapping of Aldo Moro and the murders of the Israeli citizens were grimly convenient for the two-hour PBS special Terrorism: The World at Bay. It was a live broadcast, but it had been scheduled long before these bloody events. They gave the show urgency. They did not, unfortunately, add any illumination to its inquiry.

There is something a little odd, not to say batty, about a television show on the problem of terrorism. It is a bit like a tabloid headline on the problem of sensationalism. Television, as several of the experts who were interviewed remarked, has contributed heavily to the problem. What, one wonders, can it offer toward a solution, apart from shutting up? “We are partners of the terrorists,” an Israeli TV reporter confessed. A BBC official disputed this in the name of the public’s right to know, but Conor Cruise O’Brien sensibly replied that there is a great difference between reporting the facts and milking the spectacle.