Presentation based on my report for the Tow Center at Columbia published in Spetember 2016 looking at how western media reports on terror. The practical, ethical and political challenges facing news organisations and the role of the digital platforms and social media.

1. Prof Charlie Beckett
Polis, LSE

2. Reporting terror:
The journalistic prism
• No point seeing editorial choices in isolation
• Ethical and ideological decisions made under
extraordinary pressures
• Increasing divide between irresponsible and
responsible journalism
• Codes & guidelines useful, but regulation
probably irrelevant

3. Limits of the research
• Highly western centric
• Newsroom perspective prioritised
• Not a survey or representative
• Commissioned as a provocation, not
prescription
• Part of a series of reports on media and
terrorism commissioned by Democracy Fund
from Tow Center, Columbia

4. Findings:
Newsrooms are struggling
• Widespread concern that journalism around
terror is spreading fear and confusion
• Journalists are struggling, especially in
breaking news, to cope with accelerating news
cycle, event complexity and increasing
multidimensional nature of media
environment

5. Helping the terrorist?
• Danger that journalism is spreading confusion
with lack of verification, accuracy and context
• Danger of reinforcing prejudices and
stereotypes
• Danger of helping terrorist in their goals,
harming security and increasing recruitment

6. Powerful platforms
• Digital platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google
etc) are increasingly where people create,
share and receive information on terrorism
• They lack ethos, skills and editorial capacity of
news organisations
• They are still negotiating their relationship
with news media

7. Problematic platforms
• Platforms increasingly filter and shape news
flows around terror
• They have the dilemma of wanting to be open
platforms but seek to protect users against
offence and face demands to prevent
incitement
• Still provide immense opportunity for greater
access and more sophisticated mediation

8. Recommendations
• News organisations (and platforms) need
detailed guidelines
• Needs an iterative, reflective process of self-
critical appraisal
• Internal communications & deliberation
around guidelines and practice must be across
all platforms and active even during breaking
news

9. Better right than first
• News organisations need better systems of
verification including third party agencies
• Principle of ‘better right than first’ needs to be
enforced across all platforms
• News media needs to prioritise trust based on
reliability over speed

10. Think
• Journalists need to think harder about their
language and framing of stories
• They need to think harder about
proportionality, scale and relevance
• They need to think again about herd mentality
and stale forumlae

11. Better reporting
• News media needs to seize opportunities of:
• public participation
• New technologies eg data visualisations
• New platforms that can access different
demographics and more diverse audiences

12. Better platforms
• Need to work more closely and openly with
news organisations and prioritise best
journalism
• Need to increase internal editorial capacity
and work more with ‘honest brokers’
• Need to accept their editorial responsibility
and their wider social role (greater than news
media’s)

13. Other actors
• Politicians need to lead on more restrained,
resilient and inclusive language and less
reactive policy-making
• Other authorities, such as police, need better
and more transparent communications
• Other stakeholders, such as community
leaders, need stronger voice

14. Contacts
• C.h.beckett@lse.ac.uk
• @CharlieBeckett
• http://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/cover
age_terrorism_social_media.php