UK’s top counterterror officers urge media to rein in coverage of Islamic State and jihad terror attacks

Mark Rowley, the assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police, said a “fine balance” was needed in coverage of terrorism because Isis tries to use events as propaganda to “radicalise and influence”.

That’s not really what this is about. Rowley and other British officials don’t want media coverage of jihad attacks because they don’t want the British public to become alarmed about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat. They want to keep people ignorant and complacent so that they don’t cast them out of office and put in place new leaders who will deal with the threat realistically.

Mark Rowley, Theresa May, and the rest of the British establishment bear the responsibility for enabling the jihad threat in Britain in the first place. Now they don’t want people to realize the full extent of the devastation they have caused. But they’re intent on making sure that I am barred from the country for opposing jihad terror. Read about it in my book Fatwa: Hunted in America.

“Rein in Isis and terrorism coverage, police chiefs tell media”, by Graham Ruddick, Guardian, November 13, 2017:

Britain’s top counterterrorism officers have urged the media to rein back on coverage about Islamic State and terrorist attacks because of concerns that it helps to spread propaganda.

Mark Rowley, the assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police, said a “fine balance” was needed in coverage of terrorism because Isis tries to use events as propaganda to “radicalise and influence”.

Speaking at the Society of Editors conference in Cambridge, Rowley said: “I do think there are some ways that you can rein back what you do. There is a fine balance. If [Isis] are looking to influence, you have to ask, are you helping them to influence.”

Cressida Dick, the Met commissioner and Britain’s most senior police officer, also called for calm when covering terrorist attacks.

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“You must inform but not glorify and provide the platform this evil craves,” she said. “You must investigate but not in a dangerous way which disrupts the extensive efforts of the police and security services. You must comment but not in a way that creates excessive fear and multiplies the terror.”

Dick made her comments in a wide-ranging speech about the police’s relationship with the media.

The commissioner started in the role in April and spent her first day in the job at the funeral of PC Keith Palmer, who was murdered in the Westminster terror attack.

Dick said she wanted to “reset” the relationship between the Met and the media and “stop the fighting”. She pledged to be “transparent” in her work with the press and that relationships with a journalist “should not be categorised in the same way as a relationship with a criminal”.

However, she refused to apologise for Operation Elveden, the investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police officers and other public officials. This operation saw more than 30 journalists arrested or charged but then not convicted….