Like a Weapon in the Street: Terrorism and the Media in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Richard Clutterbuck (1975:147) once famously argued that ‘The television camera is like a weapon in the street. Either side can pick it up and use it’. Undoubtedly, it is difficult to have a serious conversation about terrorism without having a serious conversation about the media. Talking about the media in the twenty-first century is fairly problematic. What is the media? What experiences can we say are mediated and which experiences are not? What is the status of witnessing when it is not live and direct, when it occurs as a consequence of a globalised media environment? In Chapter 2 I showed how witnessing has always been a central feature of the terrorism equation. Now it is time to think about that claim in a little more depth. It is also another opportunity to stand on the wrong building, without being too judgemental.