Article 2H3P3 Whatever the rhetoric, Masood was just a deluded loser

Whatever the rhetoric, Masood was just a deluded loser

by
Peter Preston
from World news | The Guardian on (#2H3P3)
With so many journalists on hand to give their take on last Wednesday's horror, the oxygen of publicity was flowing. Mrs T would have been appalled

You know what Margaret Thatcher would have said about Westminster Bridge. She'd have delivered her "oxygen of publicity" diatribe. She'd have told assembled editors that reporting terrorist atrocities - spreading fear and alarm - was doing the terrorists' job for them. We once pondered the problem of a Belgrave Square bomb blanketed in silence. It would have been the same for parliament's gates. (Oh, and turn off the sound when Martin McGuinness does a TV interview.)

Like many effusions from Mrs T, this was all a tad overdone, not to say ludicrous. How could the massed ranks of media pretend that central London wasn't a chaos of gridlock and screaming ambulances? But there was - and always is - a countervailing argument for balance and self-restraint. Silence is one thing; hysteria is quite another.

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