Terrorism and the media in Britain: a brief guide

MEDIA AND TERRORISM FORM AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP:

Journalists want to tell exciting stories and inform audiences, while terrorists want to direct attention towards a specific cause. Yet, despite the often-honourable aims of many journalists, excessive news coverage can have significant implications for community relations and perceptions of minority groups.

While press, television and online news coverage in the United Kingdom is currently focused on topics such as the war in Ukraine or the cost-of-living crisis, one area that has dominated the news media over the past two decades is terrorism. A sensational and highly emotive subject, terrorism demands media attention. Journalists also have a responsibility to ensure that citizens are informed about the threats they face. Yet the way terrorism has historically been reported on in the UK has been problematic. What’s more, the changing media environment and rise of digital media

also means that journalists must compete with a growing range of groups, including terrorists themselves, when reporting on such issues. This brief guide has been designed as a teaching and information source on the topic of terrorism and the media. It draws together academic literature, governmental reports and survey data, alongside original focus group research, to offer a useful, fact-based guide that helps make sense of the way journalists cover terrorist violence and the challenges they face.

The guide has been funded by the University of Sheffield and the UK Economic and Social Research Council, and the focus groups involved schools, charities, youth parliaments and councils based in the north of England.