Análisis cualitativo de la ejecución

death, to live on borrowed

time, to not have security

anywhere, anytime. It’s

to watch people falling

around you every day, from

bullets or shells that rain

down on entire cities.”

Ground Rules

However, caution is required, because the collection of these figures often de- pends on the goals behind their dissemination. Figures frame the understand- ing of terrorism and significantly determine States’ policies and the editorial positions of the media. Figures have consequences. The advocates of a hard fight against terrorism will tend to interpret attack statistics in an alarmist way, while those who fear a blow to freedom or a “clash of civilisations” will undoubt- edly attempt to give a more understated perspective. Consequently, all numeri- cal data must imperatively be checked, along with the methodology used to compile it. Its provenance, the period it concerns, who disseminated it and its purpose must also be underlined.

Figures are infinitely seductive. Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill, the au- thors and co-editors of Sex, Drugs and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers

in Global Crime and Conflict, thus wrote: “it is precisely because numbers are

equated with science that they provide such a tempting and powerful political tool. […] For the media and the broader public, this too often means accepting and regurgitating the claims rather than questioning and challenging them.”32

They add: “There are several straightforward questions that can and should be regularly posed when dealing with conflict-related statistics”. These ques- tions are: who came up with them? Why? How? For whom? According to the authors, figures should especially elicit uncompromising questions when the activity measured is secret, hidden and illicit. Their book contains a particularly enlightening chapter on combating the financing of terrorism, which shows the extreme fragility of advanced figures.

These reservations notwithstanding, it is incontestable that carefully gathered and interpreted figures are of real use in carrying out a serious informative work, and are a sort of “detox” for the media sphere, separating truth from lies and thus unraveling urban legends and preventing communities from being stigmatised. It is particularly important not to pick and choose figures based on one’s own prejudices: isolating an accurate figure can be another way of skewing information. Choosing a period to show the evolution of the threat – the last three years, or over 50 years – is not neutral either. Such a choice can emphasise or, on the contrary, diminish the magnitude and significance of a form of terrorism.

Furthermore, figures do not say everything. Statistically smaller or less numer- ous attacks can have a far greater political and societal impact. The political scientist Arnaud Blin thus noted that “terrorism is defined by its psychological and emotional aspect, and that the perception of the facts and their impact is far greater than the raw data”. To illustrate his point, he remarked that “a small bomb falling on a bungalow in Corsica, France, would not have the same emo- tional impact as the Charlie Hebdo massacre”.33

32 Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts. The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict, p.264 33 http://www.atlantico.fr/decryptage/et-origine-terroristes-commettant-plus-attaques-dans- mondeest-alain-blin-1958758.html

The media must also resist the temptation to rush and rely too heavily on sur- veys, which often make up “degree zero” journalism. Unfiltered, they lend them- selves to sensational or simplistic headlines. The media also too often refrain from reading the details of the survey and simply repeat the summaries. Who commissioned the survey? When was it carried out? On what sample of the population? What were the conditions of security and freedom? What ques- tions were asked? Some institutions that carry out surveys are obviously more conscientious than others, but critical distance is a requisite in all circumstanc- es – even when those who commissioned the survey are respectable intergov- ernmental or non-governmental organizations.34

3.6

Images

Images are at the core of terrorist acts. This was already true of plane hijack- ings, hostage situations and car-bomb attacks, even though terrorists had not mastered image recording or dissemination.

It is even more so today, now that terrorist groups have their own media such as Inspire (Al-Qaida) or Dabiq (Islamic State), technical teams, as well as social networks to disseminate their messages or stage their violent actions. Now that witnesses can publish a ‘live stream’ of attacks by using their smartphones and connecting to the main social networks, thus becoming “involuntary reporters”, as Agence France-Presse has put it.35

Knowing how to “strike a balance between [the] duty to inform the public, […] [the] concern for the dignity of victims being paraded by extremists, and the need to avoid being used as a vehicle for hateful, ultraviolent propaganda”, in the words of Michèle Léridon, Global News Director at Agence France-Presse, has become a critical issue.36

The debate raged in France more fiercely than ever after the attacks that took place in Nice on 14 July 2016 and Saint-Étienne du Rouvray on 26 July 2016. The French newspaper Le Monde, which had already chosen not to publish photos or video clips disseminated by terrorists, decided to apply this rule to the photos of mass murderers to avoid the “posthumous glorification” of terrorists, as editorial director Jérôme Fenoglio announced.

This decision was then taken by other media, some of which went further by banishing any mention of the names of perpetrators. It was, however, contest- ed. Michel Field, news director at France Télévisions, thus questioned: “Anony- mous attacks, without names or faces? Nothing could better activate roving conspiracy theories or promote social anxiety, which already suspects the me- dia of not saying everything or of wanting to silence the truth.”

34 http://journalistsresource.org/tip-sheets/research/statistics-for-journalists 35 https://correspondent.afp.com/involuntary-reporters

Ground Rules

These dilemmas are nothing new, but they have taken on a further dimension since the proliferation of the Internet and social networks. Not only the propa- gandists of terrorist organizations, but also web users who are little concerned about the most basic rules of journalistic ethics can operate with complete impunity. The Columbia Journalism Review thus opined that “the traditional media are no longer the sole arbiter of what should or should not be seen.”37

Glorification can set in, and even become self-sufficient, first within the “jihado- sphere”. (See: Words, page 52) Cacophony and uncertainty prevail. “Nobody knows exactly where the line separating newsworthy from dangerous or overly disturbing content lies”, noted the Columbia Journalism Review.38

For instance, was it right to disseminate the images of people falling from New York’s Twin Towers on 11 September 2001? To publish scenes of hostages who have been beheaded, even just in short clips or photos? To disseminate video- surveillance images from the Parisian

restaurant where a terrorist blew him- self up on 13 November 2015?39

Lively controversy broke out when im- ages were disseminated showing the execution of a policeman by one of the

Charlie Hebdo attackers in Paris on 7

January 2015, and the execution of an unarmed security guard during the Westgate mall attack in Nairobi in Sep- tember 2013.

Should victims’ bodies be shown in gen- eral? The law often contains answers to these questions. When Claude Erig-

nac, Prefect of Corsica (France), was assassinated in February 1998, France’s justice system condemned media that had published a photo of his body lying on the pavement. In France, the dissemination of images showing victims is punishable by a €15,000 fine.40

In other countries, situations can vary. After the Ben Gardane attack in Tunisia in March 2016, the Arabic-speaking online platform Sasa News claimed that Tunisian media were widely disseminating images of the bodies of victims and terrorists. Radhia Nasraoui, President of the Association for the Fight Against Torture in Tunisia (AFTT), criticised their conduct, stating that the dignity of the

37 http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/to_publish_or_not_foley_video.php 38 http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/to_publish_or_not_foley_video.php 39 http://www.rtl.be/info/monde/france/m6-revele-la-video-de-l-explosion-de-brahim-ab- deslam-a-paris-de-nombreux-telespectateurs-sous-le-choc-813044.aspx 40 http://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/07/15/nice-apres-l-attaque-rumeurs-et-videos- choquantes-sur-les-reseaux-sociaux_1466284

The challenge is mainly