and others distributed around the city to make a rescue impossible. Those in the city were then made available for interviews, in one particularly spectacular instance, in a press conference staged by the hijackers. The press negotiated with the hijackers for these interviews, and turned the press conference into a "circus," despite the fact that the hostages were obviously under duress and not able to speak freely. And the hijacker's allies in Beirut were frequently interviewed, executing a press strategy said to be designed by the graduates of the media departments of American universities. Few doubted that the American media were being openly and successfully manipulated.[1] And since the hijackers and their allies in Beirut were working aggressively to favor broadcast and shut out print, this was primarily a question of the performance of television journalism.[2]
There were also questions regarding the choices made by some journalists during the long Iran hostage crisis. Did that coverage do what was necessary to keep audiences as well informed as possible, or produce the best visuals? After all, it became well known—although, long after the fact, when it might have done some good—that those holding the American embassy in Tehran only actually walked the perimeter in protest with their placards when the cameras showed up (just as it was also only pointed out in retrospect that the protest signs were in English, not Farsi, and for a reason.) It was not until much later that it was made known that these "protesters" were in fact so industrious that they actually had two sets of signs. Knowing that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, (CBC), served a bilingual population, they would march carrying signs reading DEATH TO CARTER only until the cameramen signaled they had enough good footage, at
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- ↑ Again, in the updating of Hoffman's book, much of the case study of TWA 847 has fallen away. But it is worth tracking down the 1998 edition of the book for the chapter, "Terrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion," pp. 131–155, for so much of it remains relevant.
- ↑ Brigitte L. Nacos, Terrorism and the Media: From the Iran Hostage Crisis to the Oklahoma City Bombing, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994 ed., p. 50. She also quotes CBS's Tom Fenton as reporting that during the embassy siege in Tehran, reporters were offered unpublished classified documents from the embassy in return for 5 minutes of unedited air time.
