The only beneficiary of the mainstream media’s fixation on regurgitating the propagandist horror of ISIS is the terror group itself.
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These monsters have made their point. We know their barbaric ways. We know what they stand for.
Why facilitate their evil?
What value is there in bombarding the viewers and readers of Western nations such as Australia with details – graphic depictions in words, pictures and video – of the latest executions and other awful acts? ISIS must revel in the publicity.
It’s no coincidence their videos are produced to a near professional standard.
Their savvy social media wherewithal is the real weapon in all of this – not the sword.
And the world’s big media players are sucking it up in the quest for more online ‘user hits’ but at the expense of ISIS victim dignity and audience mental wellbeing.
The risk of people developing compassion fatigue and secondary trauma-related stress syndrome is greatly heightened if they are consistently – and often unwittingly - exposed to this content, which is always placed prominently on news sites and pages.
It would take a brave publisher – or social media company - to call for restraint of this type of coverage.
But it wouldn’t be conceding to the ISIS evil.
Far from being censorship … suffocation of the terror group’s publicity arm is a strategy that could re-assert Western nation control in the propaganda stakes at least.
Desensitising such violence only increases the risk of impressionable fringe radicals from copycat acts.
Above all else, peace loving, normal citizens deserve a bit of respite from the malaise and mayhem that hits us from all angles.