patrick.ainge.com

In the latest Crypto-Gram Bruce Schneier comments on columnist John Tierney’s op-ed in the New York Times. Bruce has some interesting thoughts on terrorism and the media. I definitely recommend taking a few minutes to read it. Here’s a bit from the article.

Consider this thought experiment. If the press did not report the 9/11 attacks, if most people in the U.S. didn’t know about them, then the attacks wouldn’t have been such a defining moment in our national politics. If we lived 100 years ago, and people only read newspaper articles and saw still photographs of the attacks, then people wouldn’t have had such an emotional reaction. If we lived 200 years ago and all we had to go on was the written word and oral accounts, the emotional reaction would be even less. Modern news coverage amplifies the terrorists’ actions by endlessly replaying them, with real video and sound, burning them into the psyche of every viewer.