Hooray For The BBC.

Stephen Pollard complains about the BBC not interrupting their terrestrial broadcasts to cover the discovery of the car bombs in London and suggests that it demonstrates a lack of seriousness on the part of the corporation with respect to terrorism. Whilst I'm not generally a supporter of the BBC on this issue they are rigfht and he is wrong. As I wrote last year on the anniversary of the London bombings:

The rolling news broadcasts of bloodied survivors and shocked passersby are what the perpertrators wanted. As military attacks the impact of any terrorist atrocities bar the destruction of World Trade Center have been pretty small. Only by magnifying the event through the media, in particular television, can terrorism have any real impact on then of millions of other people. In short terrorists in London last year, and in Bali, Beslan and numerous other locations before that, have harnessed television as a weapon and television news programmes are not merely observing events but are part of creating them

This is especially true in the case of failed attacks like those this week. In a sense rolling out the blanket coverage would give the vermin who planted the bombs what they wanted, which is a renewed sense of fear and unease amoung the public. So good on the BBC for treating this as a routine news story. Although I'm still not going to pay the license fee.