Herman, Edward S. and O'Sullivan, Gerry. The "Terrorism" Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror. New York: Pantheon Books, 1989. 312 pages.

If they don't support U.S. interests we call them "terrorists," but wrap the same activity in a different flag it is always done by "counter- terrorists" or "freedom fighters." This is the first vocabulary lesson to be learned from Washington's McMedia talking heads and think tank mandarins.

The authors describe the experts, examine their many overlapping links with Western intelligence, lobbyists, the security industry, and corporate foundations, and even tabulate their usage of the word "terrorism" in some of their books. They also look at state vs. nonstate terrorism, and the PLO's overpublicized terrorism as opposed to Israel's "sacred" terrorism in terms of the numbers killed, to make the point that media coverage is highly selective. "The mass media, whose structural links to government and the corporate system are already potent, and who are therefore already inclined to accept a state line, are driven further toward closure by the fact that the experts, whose credentials are from affiliation with institutions specializing in terrorism, are supplied them by the industry collective. These experts all follow the approved semantics and model and select and fit facts accordingly.... This reflects an effective propaganda system."
ISBN 0-679-72559-8

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