Profit motives drive saturation coverage that amplifies terror threats beyond their real magnitude.

Evidence

Susan D. Moeller has described how considerations of audience numbers and interests dovetail with the profit motive in what she calls “ ‘Big Story’ coverage.” In the reporting of terrorist incidents, certain events are typically hyped if they appear directly to affect a news carrier’s target audience, emphasizing the threat. With cuts to news budgets and the imperative of retaining one’s market share, a kind of saturation coverage is encouraged, making a direct appeal for the reader’s or viewer’s attention. “ ‘Big Story’ coverage means wall-to-wall reporting.… You know it’s a Big Story when there is nothing else on the news. Big Stories occur when there is a critical mass of media coverage.… [They are] why you see the same news no matter what TV station you turn on, which site you surf to, or what front page you look at.” As Cody works his dubious magic and his invention commandeers the airwaves, the Doll becomes one such story. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 363

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Moeller’s concept of ‘Big Story’ coverage — a useful analytical term for describing how media amplify fear.
• XREF: A mechanism the reader can deploy: the newsroom economics of fear-amplification serves as the institutional backstop against which Hamid’s and Naqvi’s quieter counter-narratives push. — connects to: Media publicity supplies the fuel that lets small jihadist cells threaten great powers — Scott Atran, The Devoted Actor: Unconditional…, 66