Tales of Terror: Television News and the Construction of the Terrorist Threat.

• Author: Brown, Ken

Bethami A. Dobkin. (New York. Praeger Publishers, 1992) 144pp.

In the months since the bombing of the World Trade Center, U.S. news coverage of terrorism has undergone a dramatic change. No longer do the media focus on terrorist states -- mostly in the Middle East -- that support groups of killers whose aim is to wreak havoc on the West. Now, according to the media, the threat is coming from a loose-knit grouping of Islamic fundamentalists, whose goals are more obscure and whose methods are less predictable. In several areas though, the change has not been so great the terrorists still oppose the United States, and the U.S. government still feels the need to fight these groups. And the media still play the role, willingly or not, that they have in the past: building public support for action.

In Tales of Terror: Television News and the Construction of the Terrorist Threat, Bethami A. Dobkin examines the roots of the media's role in creating the fearsome -- though mostly fictional -- image of the terrorist that ultimately fueled public support for the Reagan administration's 1986 bombing of Libya. While the book contains seeds of truth, much of Dobkin's argument is obscured by dense language, heavy use of jargon and a lack of knowledge of the daily workings of the media and government. The author also displays a simplistic cynicism concerning the influence of advertisers on news production.

Dobkin studies the construction of the terrorist threat by examining the coverage on ABC News of nine terrorist incidents that occurred in the five years between Reagan's inauguration in 1981 and the attack on Libya. These events were preceded by two key terrorist incidents in the 1970% the attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and "Skyjack Sunday," in which Palestinians hijacked three airliners on one day in 1970. According to Dobkin these attacks "introduced U.S. audiences to terrorism via television" and set the stage for television coverage of terrorism in the Reagan years. The incidents that Dobkin addresses range from the hijacking of a Pakistani airliner to the Achille Lauro incident, in which Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly American passenger, was murdered.

Because news coverage rarely differs from network to network, Dobkin's focus on ABC seems a valid way to analyze television's coverage of terrorism. Furthermore, ABC has a special relationship with terrorism since "Nightline" grew out of the network's coverage of the U.S. hostage...