JIM DUNNIGAN: “Al Qaeda, and Islamic radicals, would not be a world terrorism problem were it not for global Islamic media, and media coverage that treated the goals of the Islamic radicals with seriousness and respect.”

UPDATE: Reader Joseph Fulvio emails:

Since the ‘insurgency’ is as much about influencing the Western public as it is about destabilizing Iraq, one wonders just how virulent it would be without Al Jazeera and Western media life support. I suspect it would be far less potent absent the breathless, sympathetic ‘reporting’ of each act of barbarism. This notion is dismissed by war critics as ‘blaming the messenger,’ but that doesn’t make it any less true.

What’s interesting to me is that members of the press are exquisitely sensitive to the dangers of being manipulated by our own government, but so much less so in other cases.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Zelda Aronstein emails:

I bet if the media voluntarily stopped showing any pictures of all terror attacks, that the terror would stop. Thus ending the GWOT without a shot.

This policy would be NO DIFFERENT than how they cover folks who run on to baseball fields: they do NOT show them on TV; they ignore them.

Would the media ever put peace above their ratings/profits? Never.

Sadly, that’s probably right.