2RPP The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP 2RPP The Terrorism News Beat Professionalism, Profit, and the Press Aaron M. Hoffman University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor 2RPP Copyright © 2025 by Aaron M. Hoffman Some rights reserved This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Note to users: A Creative Commons license is only valid when it is applied by the person or entity that holds rights to the licensed work. Works may contain components (e.g., photographs, illustrations, or quotations) to which the rightsholder in the work cannot apply the license. It is ultimately your responsibility to independently evaluate the copyright status of any work or component part of a work you use, in light of your intended use. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ For questions or permissions, please contact um.press.perms@umich.edu Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press First published March 2025 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2024046659 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024046659 ISBN 978-0-472-07730-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-472-05730-6 (paper : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-472-90491-4 (open access ebook) DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.14327772 Funding for this publication provided by Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. The University of Michigan Press’s open access publishing program is made possible thanks to additional funding from the University of Michigan Office of the Provost and the generous support of contributing libraries. Authorized Representative: Easy Access System Europe, Mustamäe tee 50, 10621 Tallinn, Estonia, gpsr.requests@easproject.com 2RPP Contents Preface and Acknowledgments� vii List of Illustrations� xiii Chapter 1 A Very Bad News Beat?� 1 Chapter 2 Continuity, Change, and the Professional-Media Thesis� 26 Chapter 3 Terrorism Beat Topics, 1997–2014� 58 Chapter 4 The Language of the Terrorism Beat� 86 Chapter 5 Overestimating Journalists, Underestimating Audiences� 115 Chapter 6 Near and Dear: Spatial Variation in the Coverage of the Boston Marathon Bombing� 141 Chapter 7 Distance and Media Coverage in Five Terrorism Crises� 163 Chapter 8 Conclusions about a Surprisingly Sober News Beat� 178 References� 197 Index� 227 Digital materials related to this title can be found on the Fulcrum platform via the following citable URL: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.14327772 2RPP 2RPP Preface and Acknowledgments As I write this preface, the Israeli military is engaged in a massive counter- terrorism operation in the Gaza Strip and a smaller one in the West Bank. Israel’s actions are a response to Hamas’s shocking and brutal incursion into Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, that killed about 1,200 Israelis and enabled the kidnapping of more than 200 people. The news about these events is hard to read. Hamas fighters raped, mutilated, and tortured Israelis during their rampage. Israel’s military killed thousands of Palestinians and created a humanitarian disaster that some observers describe as the worst they have ever seen. The slice of the news media that I consult regularly is not making these terrible events worse. Israel’s counterterrorism operation gets more attention than other subjects, certainly more than Hamas’s attack, but the reporting is about much more than fighting. The suffering in Gaza is an important theme in the coverage. US newspapers are also discussing US diplomatic efforts in the region, providing update about the hostages, covering indirect discussions between Israel and Hamas over the terms of ceasefires, and tracking reactions in the United Nations, European capi- tals, and around the Arab world to the unfolding events. The domestic politics of the conflict in Israel are getting covered too. In Israel, there are questions about prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future and about whether his governing coalition is doing enough to secure the release of hostages. The Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a controversial change to Israel’s Basic Laws made headlines. Journalists are also scrutinizing the health of Israel’s economy. In the United States, the conflict created fissures in the Democratic 2RPP viii   Preface and Acknowledgments Party that came to reporters’ attention. The press followed Congress’s will- ingness to appropriate funds to support Israel’s war amid softening support for Ukraine’s war against Russia. College campuses emerged as focal points for pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian activism and, unfortunately, antisemi- tism and Islamophobia. Jewish families in the United States learned about divides between parents and children over Israel’s legitimacy as a state. These are just some of the topics getting covered. The content is reminiscent of the reporting patterns that I identify in this book. Counterterrorism news is the most covered subject on the ter- rorism news beat. Threats and attacks get significantly less attention in the United States’ most-read newspapers. Community responses to terror- ism play a smaller but significant role in regular terrorism beat reporting, addressing everything from the suffering that terrorism and counterterror- ism produces to the unexpected successes and happy moments that people experience in times of great tribulation. Even the terrorism beat has some good-news stories. I see little effort on the part of reporters to amplify the situations on the ground. I also see little inclination to dwell on the terrorist attack that started this round of fighting. The lion’s share of coverage focuses on unfolding events. Critics of terrorism beat news usually suggest that reporters sensation- alize the news to get attention for their stories and improve their employ- ers’ bottom lines. My research did not uncover patterns that are consistent with this claim, and I see little evidence that the latest round of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians is routinely exaggerated in the news I read. Neither the subject matter relating to the conflict nor the language reporters are using fit this sensationalism narrative. Instead, many complaints about the news coming out of Israel and Gaza suggest that the language reporters are using is not provocative enough. Some listeners of National Public Radio (NPR) are upset that NPR often refers to Hamas “militants” rather than “terrorists” (McBride 2023). On the other side, some reporters are complaining that news out- lets rarely describe Israel’s military action as either “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing” (Horovitz 2023). Journalists are avoiding these linguistic excesses because they follow professional norms and principles that dissuade them from sensationaliz- ing the news. In their watchdog role, journalists are supposed to keep their eyes on governments even when the things governments do are not espe- 2RPP Preface and Acknowledgments   ix cially dramatic. The norm of objectivity demands that journalists report the news accurately, in nonpartisan terms, and using moderate language. Journalists are supposed to write about the news in ways that allow audi- ences to draw their own conclusions based on the facts, not because they were swayed by provocative language. These and other reporting principles combine to produce terrorism beat news that is varied in scope and moder- ate in tone. The alternative to this model of professional journalism is one that puts the profit motive at the heart of reporting. This way of thinking certainly has produced important conclusions about terrorism beat news, including that larger terrorist attacks tend to displace smaller ones from the pages of major newspapers and that the attacks that get reported often reflect the interests of news audiences. The profit-seeking model, however, leaves me cold. Like most work- ers, journalists depend on their employers’ profitability, but there is some- thing off-putting about reducing journalism to its economic prerequisites. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that nearly 2,200 journalists and media workers have been killed since 1992. Almost 2,250 have been imprisoned for their reporting (see https://cpj.org/data). Countless more risk their lives and freedom to pursue stories they consider to be impor- tant. These brave people are not motivated primarily by concern for their employers’ bottom lines. I arrived at these conclusions with plenty of help from colleagues, friends, and family. The students and faculty at Purdue University were instrumen- tal in fostering this research. Two students, Dwaine Jengelley and Will Shelby, encouraged different elements of this work by walking into my office and asking to work on research with me. These contacts turned into valuable collaborations and collegial relationships and, most impor- tantly, terrific friendships. The work I did with Dwaine is ongoing and has involved several other students at Purdue, including Melissa Buehler, Natasha Duncan, and Meredith Rees. Stefanie Walsh helped gather data on newspaper coverage of major terrorism crises. The faculty at Purdue played a big part in this research as well. Ann Clark, Rosalee Clawson, Jay McCann, Leigh Raymond, Keith Shimko, Eric Waltenburg, and S. Laurel Weldon all commented on various parts of the argument and evidence over the years. Christopher Agnew taught me how to develop and conduct laboratory experiments. They all helped keep 2RPP x   Preface and Acknowledgments me sane along the way, and their friendship is what I value most from my time at Purdue. Students and faculty at Simon Fraser University also made major con- tributions to this work. Julia Johnston and Kevin Leung both worked with me on what eventually became the coding scheme I used to classify articles into subject-matter categories. Imraj Bolduc, Theresa Feng, Liam Palcu- Johnston, and Michael Shirley did the hard work with me of reading and classifying the more than 9,000 text segments that went into chapters 3 and 4. Devin Sidhu helped me gather data on the crime beat that I used in chapter 4. Thanks to them for their work and dedication. Simon Fraser University’s Department of Political Science supported a book workshop for me that transformed this project. Catherine Corrigal- Brown, Eline de Rooij, Shana Gadarian, Alan Jacobs, Stuart Soroka, Mark Pickup, Steve Weldon, and S. Laurel Weldon all participated and made significant contributions to my thinking on this research. I count the time I spent with this group as one of high points of my career. My family deserves credit as well. The example my father, Stephen D. Hoffman, set convinces me more than anything else that people put prin- ciples over profit. Thanks to him for his love and support. I owe him more than I can express. My sister, Judith Hoffman, showed me that I had to improve my writ- ing by falling asleep while she read my first book. Judith and her terrific kids, Sarah and Zachary, and husband, Ed, are a constant source of sup- port and joy. Thanks to them for always being there for me and my family. My mother- and brother-in-law, Sirje and Kaljo, are my loyal support- ers and enthusiastic fans. I went around and around with Sirje more than once on different aspects of this work. Thanks to her for keeping my think- ing on this subject sharp. My father-in-law, Larry, and his family, Jill, Christine, Kailis, Sequoia, Allison, Andy, Penny, Rocco, Katie, and Jeff, helped make Vancouver my new home. Always the statistician, Larry encouraged me to embrace the power of randomness, which made a big difference in this research. Jeff, the anchorman on this Weldon family list, complained about being listed behind my sisters-in-law and nieces and nephews, but never came up with the cash to boost his standing. I look forward to laughing with him about this for years to come. 2RPP Preface and Acknowledgments   xi Audrey, Zed, and Laurel, my children and my wife, make life worth living. Each year with this amazing crew is better than the one before. Audrey and Zed are the best kids a parent could have. Laurel is the best and most supportive partner. The news is never too depressing with my family around. This book is dedicated to them. 2RPP 2RPP Illustrations Figures 1 Terrorism beat news by subject, 1997–2014� 75 2 Terrorism beat subjects over time, 1997–2014� 78 3 Terrorism beat subjects by newspaper, 1997–2014� 80 4 Average tone of terrorism beat reporting across major US newspapers, 1997–2014� 93 5 The tone of terrorism beat reporting at major US newspapers, 1997–2014� 94 6 Tone of terrorism and crime beat reporting by the New York Times, 1997–2014� 97 7 Moderate and extreme language in terrorism beat news, 1997–2014� 111 8 The Boston Globe covered the Boston Marathon bombing less negatively than other newspapers� 158 9 Relationship between proximity to Boston and tone of reporting on the Boston Marathon bombing� 161 10 Relationship between physical distance and news tone in five crises� 175 Tables 1 Differing expectations about the terrorism beat’s content and language� 54 2 Study start dates, end dates, and epicenters in five terrorism crises� 172 3 Panel regression results: distance and the tone of crisis coverage� 176 2RPP 2RPP CHAPTER 1 A Very Bad News Beat? Newspapers are not supposed to describe terrorist attacks in gruesome detail, but many do so anyway. Shortly after the Boston Marathon bomb- ing, the New York Daily News reported that the attack turned “one of the nation’s premier sporting events into a war zone of screams and severed limbs” (Ford, Chapman, and Otis 2013). The New York Times wrote that the explosions transformed the marathon’s finish line from “a scene of cheers and sweaty triumph to one of screams and carnage” (Eligon and Cooper 2013). The Boston Globe said the assault left Boston’s Boylston Street, “covered in blood” (Arsenault 2013a). Journalists claim they report only the facts, but graphic depictions of terrorism that appear even in the most respected newspapers make it dif- ficult to take this assertion seriously. Some newspapers, in fairness, covered the marathon bombing less dramatically than the Daily News, New York Times, and Boston Globe did. The Providence Journal’s lede, for instance, simply stated, “Three people died and more than 140 were injured in two powerful blasts at the Boston Marathon finish on Monday afternoon that the FBI said have become a ‘potential terrorist investigation’” (Milkovits 2013, A1). Nevertheless, it is hard to find other newspapers that exercised similar restraint. Perhaps for this reason, the public, politicians, and government officials distrust journalists. More than half of Americans consistently reject the idea that the news media reports the news “fully, accurately, and fairly” (Brenan 2022). Forty-eight percent are dismissive of newspaper journal- ists’ honesty and ethical standards. Only television reporters, lobbyists, 2   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP and members of Congress fare worse than newspaper reporters on Gallup’s annual professional honesty and ethics survey (Saad 2022). Politicians and elected officials have their doubts too. Modern elected leaders are less inclined than their predecessors from the 1970s to restrict press coverage of terrorism. This hesitancy, however, seems to come more from a sense that restricting the press is counterproductive than from a belief that the news media’s terrorism coverage is helpful (Ganor 2005). Like leaders from the 1970s, modern leaders are inclined to complain that the press makes it harder for them to deal with terrorist threats, remain open to limiting press coverage of counterterrorism, and see the news media as empowering groups that commit violence. By and large, scholarly studies of terrorism reporting support the dim view of the press held by the public and their politicians. Academics often describe the relationship between journalists and terrorists as symbiotic (e.g., Forst 2011; Laqueur 1999). Acts of terrorism help news organiza- tions attract audience attention, increasing profits, while news coverage of attacks enable terrorists to terrorize on a mass scale, boosting the coercive power of this violence. Terrorism’s economic value to news organizations is revealed by the variation in the stories that news organizations distribute. Reporting about threats and attacks fills the terrorism beat, while the steps governments take to protect the public are overlooked (Nacos 2007). When counterter- rorism makes the news, it is either because governments used force against suspected terrorists or because counterterrorism failures came to light (Nacos 2007; Jenkins 1979). Reporting about ordinary people is relatively rare on the terrorism news beat, and reliably gloomy. Regular people make the news when they are either victims of terrorism (Powell 2011) or haunted by the specter of attacks. Resiliency is an uncommon theme in reporting about the Ameri- can public’s experience with terrorism. The language reporters use on the terrorism beat supports the exagger- ated picture of terrorism that journalists paint through their subject mat- ter choices. According to David Altheide (2017), since the 9/11 attacks, the gratuitous use of negative and extreme language has characterized terrorism beat reporting. Relying on techniques developed by crime beat reporters, journalists covering the terrorism beat increased their uses of the words “fear” and “victim” in their reporting to amplify the sense of danger their articles conveyed (Altheide 2017). The result is a news beat that has A Very Bad News Beat?   3 2RPP become more threatening than it had been before, as newspapers realized the economic benefits of portraying terrorist threats in dire terms. Good-news stories are rare on the terrorism beat. By implication, posi- tive language is in short supply—temperate language too. The capture and killing of notorious terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the Tsarnaev brothers surely count as counterterrorism successes for US audiences, but events like these are dramatic and uncommon. There is little room on the sensationalized terrorism beat for moderation. It is still possible to find skeptics who question whether the press advances the interests of terrorists by supplying audiences a steady stream of grim news (e.g., Picard 1993; English 2016). But contrarians on this topic are uncommon, and recent research suggests that most readers assume that the terrorism beat is sensationalized. Gone are the days when academics explicitly claimed that the news media sensationalized terrorism reporting (e.g., Wilkinson 1997, 54–55). Now, that characterization oper- ates as an implicit assumption in studies that only consider the effects of reporting on terrorist threats and attacks (Rohner and Frey 2007; Merolla and Zechmeister 2009; Jetter 2019b, 2019a), as if no other subject that might balance the coverage of threats makes the news. Argument of the Book In this book, I argue that characterizations of the terrorism beat as sensa- tionalized and intimidating do a poor job of describing the material news- papers publish regularly about terrorist threats and attacks, counterterror- ism, and community responses to terrorism. Critics treat journalists as if they were profit-generating agents of their employers who try to attract news audiences by provoking feelings of insecurity through the content they present and the language they use in their reporting. The record of reporting from the terrorism beat, however, does not support this narrative. Journalists as Professionals A more accurate picture of the terrorism news beat emerges when we assume that journalists abide by professional principles and norms in the conduct of their jobs. These disciplinary principles and norms influence 4   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP reporting in meaningful ways by establishing quality standards that shape and constrain the content that major newspapers publish. The terrorism beat news that results is closer to a model of sober reporting than a model of sensationalized coverage. The watchdog norm, norm of objectivity, and harm minimization prin- ciple that are often invoked in discussions of journalistic practice in the United States play important roles in my argument. So do the rules of thumb or “news values” that journalists use to help them identify news- worthy content. These principles influence the character of the news ter- rorism beat that reporters produce. The watchdog norm creates a presumption that good journalism involves monitoring the actions and performance of government and gov- ernment officials (Norris 2014). Other newsworthy actors, like terrorists, deserve attention, but keeping governments accountable to the people plays a special role in reporting circles. The proof is in the coverage: stories focusing on governments and political leaders dominate the news (Bennett 2016). The norm of objectivity is best known for requiring journalists to report the news accurately and unbiasedly (Schudson 2001), although whether reporters can or should provide neutral coverage of the news is controver- sial. Reporters from underrepresented communities, for example, argue that the news is always reported from some perspective, just rarely theirs. Objective news presents itself as detached from any interests or perspec- tives, but these representations are illusory (Wallace 2019). The objectivity norm influences the news in other ways as well. “Objec- tive” news is organized hierarchically and detailed using dispassionate language (Mindich 2000). The hierarchical structure, which starts with a statement containing the most essential information and distributes the remaining facts in descending order of importance, enables readers to inform themselves quickly about the news they read. The use of moder- ate language prevents journalists from unduly influencing the conclusions audiences draw from the material they read. The facts are supposed to mat- ter most to the judgments readers make, not presentations of the news that journalists design to provoke impassioned responses. The principle of harm minimization also informs journalistic practice (Ward 2011). Like many professionals, journalists have an ethical obliga- tion to minimize negative consequences that might arise from their report- ing. For example, journalists are not supposed to tarnish the reputations A Very Bad News Beat?   5 2RPP of innocent third parties. This became an issue during the coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing when the New York Post accused two innocent people of involvement in the attack, an error that National Public Radio’s media correspondent, David Folkenflik, described as a “pretty shameful episode, and an indefensible one” (Simon 2013). This responsibility to protect also applies to news audiences. Accord- ing to the Society of Professional Journalists, unnecessarily provocative accounts of events are to be avoided because they place audiences at risk. The news is supposed to be informative, not materially or psychologically damaging. Last but not least, journalistic practice is guided by several news values that help reporters identify newsworthy content. Negative news is the news value that gets the most attention, but journalists use many principles to select newsworthy content. Good news, surprising news, and timely news are just some of the content categories journalists try to draw on. Collectively, these news values encourage journalists to cover a variety of topics and events that relate to their area of reporting. Negative news might make up the largest share of any news beat, but not all of it. News- papers deliver a range of content to their readers. The Terrorism Beat through the Lens of Professional Practices Examining the terrorism news beat through the lens of journalism’s pro- fessional principles and practices suggests that terrorism reporting con- tinues to meet journalistic standards for quality. The watchdog norm calls upon journalists to focus their attention on governments, and this is exactly what they do. Between 1997 and 2014, counterterrorism reporting dominated the United States’ most widely read newspapers—the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Across the entire period, material about counterterrorism appeared more than twice as often than material about terrorist threats and attacks. Counterterrorism played an important role in the coverage of the Bos- ton Marathon bombing as well. Day one of the marathon bombing cover- age was almost entirely about the attack at the finish line, but days two through five focused on the investigation of the attack by local and federal authorities. Developments in the criminal investigation made the front pages of the New York Times and Boston Globe from the second day of the 6   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP crisis until its end. The New York Daily News made the death of eight-year- old Martin Richard the subject of its April 17, 2013, front page, but made the counterterrorism investigation front-page news the next three days. Critics say that counterterrorism is newsworthy when governments use force against suspected terrorists or their behind-the-scenes sponsors. This view cannot account for the marathon coverage, however, since nei- ther local nor federal authorities used force in their investigation until the final night of the crisis. The same conclusion applies to counterterrorism coverage more generally. Between 1997 and 2014, both criminal justice and diplomatic responses to terrorism received more attention in major US newspapers than violent counterterrorism efforts. This result emerged even though the United States conducted extensive military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and made regular use of drone strikes in places like Pakistan and Yemen after the 9/11 attacks. Material about terrorist threats and attacks is not even the second-most- reported-on subject on the terrorism beat, raising questions about the idea that the terrorism beat focuses on shocking acts of political violence per- petrated by subnational actors. Numerous miscellaneous reports appear regularly in terrorism beat reporting, covering everything from the details of diplomatic meetings that bring national leaders together to the earnings reports of companies that are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Critics of the terrorism beat are right that news about community responses to terrorism make up the smallest portion of the stories that appear on the terrorism news beat, but this content is more varied than expected. This variety is consistent with the value journalists place on sub- ject matter diversity, as reflected in the large number of news values that reporters use to identify newsworthy material. Accounts of people who are frightened by the prospect of future attacks constitute just one of the ways journalists portray the public. During cover- age of the Boston Marathon bombing, journalists also reported on the her- oism of doctors who ran in the marathon and then rushed to give injured people medical attention. They reported about the generosity of Bosto- nians who opened their homes to disoriented and displaced runners. They reported about community groups that organized vigils, remembrances, and funding drives to ease the pain caused by the marathon attack. News about members of the public taking active roles against terror- ism also appears outside of crises. These stories include accounts of work people do to improve the capacity of their communities to respond to A Very Bad News Beat?   7 2RPP terrorism, including lobbying governments to pass anti-terrorism legisla- tion. The decisions people make to purchase services and devices to protect themselves from terrorism get covered as well. This last observation is worth underscoring, because news about the economic consequences of terrorism appears frequently but rarely gets mentioned in studies of terrorism beat reporting. The Wall Street Journal, the US newspaper with the largest circulation, regularly covers terrorism’s effects on the economy, both the good and the bad, including terrorism’s impact on the profitability of individual firms and industries. After 9/11, the financial difficulties experienced by the US airline industry got a lot of attention, but stories about companies, such as luxury goods producer Burberry PLC, that did well despite the poor economy appeared too (Wall Street Journal 2003). The relative mixture of reporting on terrorist threats and attacks, coun- terterrorism, and community responses to terrorism changed over time— critics said this would happen—but not enough to alter the terrorism beat’s central tendencies. The ratio of counterterrorism reporting to report- ing about terrorist threats and attacks was largest toward the end of the Clinton administration and smallest toward the end of the Obama admin- istration, but the magnitude of the changes in reporting from Clinton to Obama was relatively small. Counterterrorism coverage still dominated terrorism beat reporting during the Obama years, as it did when Clinton was president. The gap between the amount of reporting on threats and attacks and the amount of reporting on community responses to terrorism changed from year to year in unexpected ways. Even though journalists usually devote less attention to community responses to terrorism than other terrorism beat subjects, there are periods when they cover community responses to terrorism as much or more than they cover threats and attacks. Once again, it is difficult to square this result with the idea that newspapers rely on reporting about threats and attacks to sell the news. The language journalists use to cover the terrorism beat is also con- sistent with journalism’s professional norms and standards. Highly nega- tive language attracts audience attention (Albertson and Gadarian 2015; Trussler and Soroka 2014), but the norm of objectivity and the harm- minimization principle encourage journalists to use temperate language. The evidence suggests that the United States’ most widely read newspapers used negative language with care. 8   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP Negative words outnumbered positive words on the terrorism news beat between 1997 and 2014, but it does not appear that newspaper reporters used 9/11 as an excuse to frighten readers by deliberately amplifying the sense of danger their reporting conveyed. Words like “fear” and “victim” appeared less frequently after 9/11 than before it. The overall negativity of terrorism beat news in the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post also declined after 9/11. To be clear, the terrorism beat’s reduced negativity did not produce a preponderance of positively worded stories. Positive words either equaled or outnumbered negative words in only about 25 percent of paragraphs I examined. Nevertheless, this small but identifiable subset of the terrorism beat is consistent with the professional interest journalists show in provid- ing audiences a diverse set of stories to consider. It is also worth noting that the crime beat did not experience a simi- lar reduction in the negativity of the content it provided. Before 9/11, reporters on the terrorism and crime beats produced stories that had approximately the same mixture of negative and positive words in them. After 9/11, reporters on the terrorism beat reduced their reliance on nega- tive words relative to positive ones, while their crime beat counterparts increased their reliance on negative words relative to positive ones. It took three years for the negativity of the terrorism and crime beats to harmo- nize. The negativity of the two news beats diverged again in 2008. These results contradict the notion that terrorism beat reporters began to copy the techniques used by their crime beat reporting counterparts after 9/11. It also raises doubts about the idea that the terrorism beat’s reduced nega- tivity reflected an overall shift in the tone of news that major US newspa- pers published. There are other signs that the craft of journalism is alive and well on the terrorism news beat. I scrutinized a subsample of 500 articles that I drew at random from the larger set of terrorism beat articles I analyzed, looking for evidence that reporters followed the principles of objective reporting. I found they did. Articles in this subsample overwhelmingly relied on the inverted- pyramid organizational style and wrote in the third person, a writing technique reporters use to show their detachment from the news they covered. Journalists did not “balance” competing perspectives on terror- ism beat subjects frequently, a strategy that journalists often use to avoid political bias from corrupting their work, but after 9/11 Republicans and A Very Bad News Beat?   9 2RPP Democrats often agreed on terrorism-related issues. The use of balance as a reporting strategy increased noticeably in years Republicans and Demo- crats vied for the presidency. The charge that journalists use negative language gratuitously instead of judiciously, as professional practice dictates, is contradicted by the results of an editing test I devised. News that relies on unnecessary language can be edited so that the resulting sentences contain fewer negative words, while still conveying the essential information contained in the original. My efforts to cut unnecessary words from 500 lead sentences, however, did not result in substantial changes to the originals. There just were not that many words that could be removed from published terrorism beat articles. The affective intensity of the language used in terrorism beat news is also consistent with the idea that journalists are supposed to avoid extreme language to the extent they can. Whether journalists used negative or posi- tive words in their reporting, they typically opted for moderate language even though they had more provocative words available. For instance, instead of reporting that the US government considered ways to negotiate with the Taliban over Osama bin Laden’s “seizure,” the New York Times reported that the Clinton administration worked to secure bin Laden’s “capture” (Risen 1998). Truly extreme words like “torture” did appear in terrorism news beat articles (mostly in reporting about the treatment of people captured by the US military during its campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq), but infre- quently. When reporters used intensely negative or positive words, they often either lacked less provocative synonyms or were quoting sources. Provocative words also tended to appear in article headlines, the one area of news where journalists allow themselves to use sensational language with some frequency. As a rule, in other words, the terrorism news beat does not appear to be filled with shocking words that are selected simply for effect. Moderate language predominates. Extreme words are used appropriately. The tendency to rely on muted language can even be found during the coverage of terrorism crises like the Boston Marathon bombing. Instead of increasing the negativity of their reporting during these periods, newspa- pers across the United States moderate the tone of the terrorism beat news they publish. This is a pattern that emerged in coverage of the 1995 Okla- homa City bombing, the 1996 Olympic Park bombing, the 2001 9/11 attacks, the 2002 DC Sniper case, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and the 2016 Dallas police shooting (see Schudson 2002; McDonald and 10   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP Lawrence 2004; and Alexander 2004 for complementary findings). This shift in the tone of reporting is strongest among journalists who work for newspapers that are closest to the sites of attacks. Local reporters provide their readers the least negative news of all. Journalists who serve more dis- tant audiences use negative language more freely. The Terrorism Beat through the Eyes of Audiences These findings paint an unconventional portrait of the terrorism beat’s content. Some might even say an unconvincing one, because the central question about the terrorism beat is not about the news journalists pro- duce but about the reactions audiences have to that material. Many stud- ies have shown that news about terrorism is capable of intimidating on a mass scale. Prominent emotional reactions include fear (Huddy, Feldman, Taber, and Lahav 2005), anger (Huddy et al. 2021), and distress (Silver et al. 2005). These responses often lead to a host of political reactions, including heightened ethnocentrism (Kam and Kinder 2007), less respect for democracy (Merolla and Zechmeister 2009), and greater disdain for civil liberties (Davis and Silver 2004). These responses are not simply a product of sensationalized reporting. There is even evidence that positive terrorism beat news undermines people’s sense of security by reminding them of the dangers that lurk (Sunstein 2005). My research, however, questions this narrative about public sensitivity to terrorism beat news. The problem with concluding that exposure to terrorism beat news straightforwardly causes people to experience a host of negative psychological effects is that the results that support this claim draw on biased samples of terrorism beat content. Representations of ter- rorism beat content in scholarly research are overwhelmingly based on the most provocative work newspapers publish about terrorist threats and attacks (e.g., Hall and Ross 2015). Rarely considered is the possibility that the less provocative terrorism beat material that newspapers publish might mitigate the effects of news about acts of terrorist violence. Using a simulation based on the work of Lukas Feick, Karsten Donnay, and Katherine McCabe (2021), I show that when people are exposed to average news from the terrorism beat, they can be expected to react more moderately than when they are exposed to extreme terrorism beat content. In most cases, the daily terrorism beat news people receive is not alarming A Very Bad News Beat?   11 2RPP enough to turn fundamentally secure people into fundamentally insecure ones. This simulation also suggests that a subset of terrorism beat content can improve people’s sense of security from terrorism. Just as the terrorism news beat offers audiences a wide range of content, audiences react in a variety of ways to the news they receive. Attention to the effects of counterterrorism reporting underscores this point. It is difficult to find empirical research on the effects of counterter- rorism news even though counterterrorism is the most reported subject on the terrorism beat and effective counterterrorism operations appear to be reassuring (e.g., Zussman and Zussman 2006). A series of experiments I conducted underscore that counterterrorism coverage cannot be assumed to have the same consequences as reporting about threats and attacks. On the contrary, news about effective counterterrorism can improve people’s sense of security from terrorism. These results contradict the idea that ter- rorism beat news inevitably makes news audiences feel insecure. Instead, counterterrorism news can have the opposite effect on those who read it. More generally, the findings reported in this book raise questions about describing the terrorism beat in sensationalized terms. Journalists surely exaggerate the news by providing audiences a statistically unrepresentative sample of events that take place each day. Reporters tend to cover the most dramatic events rather than the least dramatic ones, a selection process that distorts the severity of issues like terrorism and crime. But gatekeeping and sensationalism are not the same. Charges of sen- sationalism imply that journalists deliberately exaggerate the events they cover. I find little evidence, however, for this claim. Instead, the terrorism beat follows journalistic standards for excellence. In this way, it is more accurate to characterize the terrorism news beat as a source of quality news, one that performs the press’s watchdog functions, meets journalistic stan- dards for objectivity, is measured in its presentation, and follows industry- wide writing practices. The terrorism beat may even help audiences cope with the threat of terrorism. (Almost) Nothing up My Sleeve My findings and conclusions are not a product of quirky designations, unusual news sources, or exotic research methods. I use a standard defi- nition of terrorism as “the premediated use or threat to use violence by 12   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP individuals or subnational groups to obtain a political or social objective through the intimidation of a large audience beyond the immediate vic- tims” (Enders and Sandler 2006, 4). I define counterterrorism as efforts by governments to either pre- vent future attacks or to manage the consequences of terrorist violence. This definition is consistent with Todd Sandler’s (2015, 12) conceptual- ization of counterterrorism as any action “to ameliorate the threat and consequences of terrorism.” When I discuss security perceptions, I mean the sense that people are in “a stable, relatively predictable environment” that allows them to pursue their goals “without disruption or harm and without fear of such disturbance or injury” (Fisher and Green, quoted in Brooks 2010, 226). My data is drawn from the pages of local, national, and international English-language newspapers available to researchers through Lexis Nexis and its successor, Nexis Uni. Both are popular databases for studying news content. My closest analyses focus on stories published in the following mainstream news outlets: New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Only the Wall Street Journal has not been used in previous studies of the terrorism news beat. I identified articles in all these sources using variations on the words “terrorism” and “terrorist” in key- word searches. The only restrictions I placed on my searches were temporal. With one exception, my research methods are also standard. The tech- niques I use include qualitative content analysis, automated text analysis, and laboratory experiments. I rely on these methods to help me uncover various dimensions of the terrorism news beat. The one methodological innovation I introduce appears in chapter 4, involving the use of copy editing as a research tool. As I mentioned ear- lier, I relied on copy editing to examine whether journalists used tonal (i.e., negative and positive) language gratuitously in their reporting. Copy editing, in other words, provides one way of getting at the counterfactual claim that terrorism beat news could have been written less dramatically. Regardless of whether readers are persuaded by copy editing as a research method, my conclusions about the terrorism news beat do not depend on my copy-editing skills. Instead, my conclusions about terror- ism news can be traced to my conceptualization of terrorism reporting as a kind of journalistic beat governed by strong reporting norms and profes- sional standards, my reliance on research that shows that people cope effec- A Very Bad News Beat?   13 2RPP tively with terrorist activity (e.g., Bonanno 2004), and my use of probabi- listic sampling techniques to gather articles for study. Bringing these ideas together with a range of research techniques produces a different view of the content of terrorism beat news than orthodox accounts provide. Treating terrorism reporting as if it constituted a news beat is the first step in the intellectual process that produced these divergent results. Beats establish thematic areas of reporting that journalists cover from any number of angles (Becker and Vlad 2009; Reich 2012). Reporters on the sports beat, for example, routinely document the outcomes of professional and amateur competitions. They also examine the influence of gambling on sports, the economics of sports, the personal struggles athletes confront, and ownership and rules changes that impact teams and sporting activities. Sports reporters even cover terrorism’s effects on athletic events (Hoffman 1998). In principle, observers recognize that the terrorism beat is like other news beats, in the sense that it can be a wide-ranging source of material relating to terrorist and counterterrorist activity. In practice, though, ter- rorism beat research mainly focuses on the coverage of terrorist threats and attacks (Weimann and Brosius 1991; Weimann and Winn 1994; Jetter 2019a, 2019b; Yang and Chen 2018; Delli Carpini and Williams 1987; Kearns, Betus, and Lemieux 2019; Rohner and Frey 2007; Chermak and Gruenewald 2006; Mitnik, Freilich, and Chermak 2020; Moeller 2009; Winkler et al. 2018). News about anything other than terrorist threats and attacks either gets ignored or treated like a sideshow. As a result, scholarly research on the terrorism beat tends to portray this area of reporting as preoccupied with violence by subnational actors. Another advantage of conceptualizing terrorism reporting as a news beat is the connection this framing facilitates for research that treats jour- nalism as an organized activity defined by professional rules, norms, and expectations (e.g., Gaye 1978; Ryfe 2006; Bennett 2016). Reporters who work the terrorism beat must conform to these rules and principles of appropriate behavior to have their work taken seriously by colleagues and news audiences. What counts as quality news in the first place depends on the set of professionally accepted standards that serve as benchmarks for evaluating the work journalists do. My conclusions about the terrorism news beat are also influenced by research on the psychological responses Americans had to the 9/11 attacks. The standard take on the terrorism beat implicitly assumes that people are 14   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP easily intimidated by the news they receive, but research on reactions to 9/11 calls this conclusion into question. Relatively small percentages of people experienced extreme stress reactions to 9/11, including residents of New York City, where two of the attacks took place (Bonanno et al. 2006). This pessimism about people’s ability to cope with terrorism news reflects an unwarranted level of cynicism about the strength of their psy- chological defenses against bad news. The pessimism also reflects a lack of appreciation of the amount of variation there is in the negativity of report- ing. Negative news from the terrorism beat surely reduces people’s relative sense of security from terrorism, but this does not mean that exposure to terrorism beat news routinely makes people cross the threshold between feeling secure from terrorism and feeling insecure from terrorism. On average, people can maintain their sense of security from terrorism while reading the news because they possess a strong enough set of psychosocial resources to respond adaptively to negative information and because the news tends to be moderate in tone. Finally, my conclusions about the terrorism news beat depart from the conventional wisdom, because I gathered news content for this research using random sampling techniques. Purposive samples guarantee that con- sideration is given to reporting on the most salient attacks, but it also means that conclusions from studies that rely on purposive samples may not reflect typical journalistic practices. Random sampling addresses the problem of bias, albeit at the cost of being unable to guarantee that report- ing about specific attacks is considered. My sample, for instance, contains no news about the anthrax attacks in the United States that took place between September 18, 2001, and October 9, 2001. This an unfortunate but acceptable omission, since one of the goals of this work is to establish a reliable picture of everyday terrorism beat news. The Context for This Research Questions about the coverage of terrorism by the news media stem from the belief that terrorists require publicity to be successful (Schmid and de Graaf 1982; Rohner and Frey 2007; Pfeiffer 2012). This idea has a long history. Nineteenth-century terrorists dubbed their use of violence “propa- ganda by deed” because of their ability to attract attention to their causes A Very Bad News Beat?   15 2RPP by staging shocking attacks (Schmid 1989; Bolt 2012). Executed properly, even small-time violence and threats could gain attention. The key to caus- ing a stir was getting the press to report on attacks. During the mid-1800s, the efforts of terrorist organizations were assisted by a burgeoning newspaper industry and sharply rising literacy rates. Changes in printing technology enabled publishers to print and dis- tribute many more papers per day than they had in the past. The price of publishing these copies dropped as well. Newspapers became a mass- market product sold to increasingly literate consumers (Saunders 2015). The rise of widely available news solved a fundamental problem that terrorists have had to solve: how to disseminate information about attacks to the public. Perpetrating symbolic crimes for the purposes of sowing fear and conveying political messages to target audiences only works if word of these attacks gets out. Otherwise, as former ABC news anchor Ted Koppel noted, “terrorism becomes rather like the philosopher’s hypothetical tree falling in the forest: no one hears it fall and therefore it has no reason for being” (quoted in Zulaika and Douglass 1996, 7). Nineteenth-century newspapers were happy to oblige, regularly print- ing reports about successful and unsuccessful attacks in Europe, Rus- sia, and the United States (Dietze 2022). The frequency of the coverage undoubtedly encouraged the view that the news media was unable to resist reporting about terrorism because it was such “dramatic, bad news” (Wilkinson 1997). What we now know about terrorism reporting, however, suggests that the task of getting press coverage is more complicated than the publica- tion rate implies. Terrorists undoubtedly enjoy an advantage over many other potential newsmakers, because journalists prefer news that is dra- matic (Hilgartner and Bosk 1988), conflictual (Oliver and Meyers 1999), surprising (Baum and Groeling 2010), and threatening to the status quo (Gans 1979). These advantages, however, are not decisive. Numerous acts of terrorism are ignored by the press because there are still many events for journalists to choose from within the set of dramatic, conflictual, surpris- ing, and status-quo-threatening occurrences. This includes other acts of terrorism that vie for space in daily newspapers (Scott 2001). Commit- ting acts of terrorism comes with no guarantee of press attention (Shelton, Cleven, and Hoffman 2018). On the contrary, news organizations exercise discretion over the events 16   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP they cover, a process known as “gatekeeping.” Instead of presenting audi- ences either a comprehensive or a statistically representative sample of attacks, newspapers favor the attacks that are most relevant to their audi- ences. This often means the most violent attacks are covered (Weimann and Winn 1994; Chermak and Gruenewald 2006; Mitnik, Freilich, and Chermak 2020), but it might also mean the attacks that are the most prox- imate to news audiences are favored (Hoffman et al. 2010). Whatever the calculus, the news selection process journalists use leaves audiences with an inflated sense of the threat terrorists pose (Nellis and Savage 2012). Just how big a problem this selection effect creates is open to debate. A news media that unintentionally exaggerates terrorism’s severity by focus- ing on the most dramatic attacks, broadly conceived, might not do its audiences a tremendous disservice. The type and quality of the informa- tion that news organizations provide on attacks has to be considered before coming to any conclusions (Nacos 1990). If the same gatekeeping pro- cesses also exaggerated the quality of counterterrorism responses and the strength of anti-terrorism programs and defenses, then public reactions to dramatic acts of terrorism might be less intense (Hoffman and Shelby 2017). The way the news media reported on community responses to ter- rorism would matter as well. Reporting that overrepresented the public’s ability to cope with terrorism could make news audiences more confident about their own resilience. Critics, however, say that news organizations are unaccustomed to offering audiences comfort. Instead, newspapers sensationalize the terror- ism beat. They do this by covering frightening topics while ignoring reas- suring ones, depicting the material they do cover in alarming ways that break with established journalistic principles and standards. The effect is a news beat that frightens audiences unnecessarily and helps perpetrators achieve their goals by exaggerating the threat they pose to society. The Intellectual Challenge This idea that the distorted coverage of terrorism by the news media helps perpetrators sew fear is widely, but not universally, accepted (Picard 1993). Michael Stohl (2008) says the idea that the news media is complicit in advancing the interests of terrorist organizations is a myth. His work with Mary Brinson (2010) shows that terrorism reporting gets framed in terms A Very Bad News Beat?   17 2RPP governments provide rather than terrorist organizations. In a similar vein, Paletz, Fozzard, and Ayanian (1982) argue that the news media’s coverage of terrorist organizations fails to legitimize these groups, as is often alleged. Responses like these, however, have not stuck. Instead, analysts essen- tially say that reporters dramatize the terrorism news beat in ways that make it “a panic and fear multiplier rather than a shock absorber in emer- gencies” (Mitra 2009, 434). Consequently, the idea that the news media is complicit in advancing the interests of terrorists persists. One reason for this is that defenders of the news media are not unified around a theoretical framework that chal- lenges the charge of media complicity and provides a coherent account of how news on the terrorism beat gets produced. The complicit-media thesis, in contrast, integrates its account of the quality of terrorism beat news with an account of how all news, not just the terrorism beat, is made: journalists produce provocative news because provocative content sells and news organizations need profits to survive. This profit-seeking model that is at the heart of the complicit-media thesis suggests that the alarming character of terrorism beat news is a direct product of a news production process that incentivizes the creation of provocative content. Arguments against the complicit-media thesis are at a disadvantage, because they cannot connect the general principles journalists use to create the news to the kinds of information they say newspapers normally produce. They have no analogue to the profit-seeking model that proponents of the complicit-media thesis use to explain how terrorism beat news is produced. Hence, there is little reason to abandon the idea that the news media helps terrorists intimidate audiences, because critics have not offered reasons to believe that it is unusual for journalists to produce sensationalized news. Arguments that defend the quality of terrorism beat news also oper- ate at a methodological deficit. The charge that that the news media sen- sationalizes terrorism is long-standing, but critics continue to meet this argument with research that focuses on either a relatively small number of high-profile cases (e.g., Atwater 1987) or from news reported over rela- tively short periods of time (e.g., Brinson and Stohl 2010). These limita- tions make it too easy for proponents of the complicit-media thesis to paint confounding results as outside the norm. Arguments that challenge the notion of media complicity must be able to make a case for that perspec- tive across a relatively large number of cases and over a relatively lengthy time frame to be persuasive. 18   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP The Professional-Media Thesis My goal in this book is to examine the terrorism news beat by articulating and evaluating an alternative model of news production that draws on the sociology and psychology of news reporting instead of the economics of news reporting. This model is designed to explain both the news produc- tion process at major newspapers and the implications of that process for the content produced by terrorism beat reporters. I refer to this as the professional model of news production. There is enormous evidence that reporters in the United States behave as if they are members of a professional community who are bound by industry-wide norms and practices. Journalists routinely produce news from the terrorism beat in conformity with established professional norms, rules, and conventions that define quality work in their field. Journalis- tic institutions, like the watchdog principle and the norm of objectivity, influence the content of the news, set standards for quality reporting, and homogenize the ways information is presented to the public (Ryfe 2012). These journalistic principles and practices also insulate reporters from eco- nomic pressures on the business of news, tempering the incentives to break with standard practices. Crises are the exception. Crises induced by acts of terrorism disrupt the professional principles and standard operating procedures that journalists rely on from day to day and bring a new psychology to the forefront of terrorism beat reporting. Sympathy for victims affects the production of news about crises in ways it does not for non-crisis news. Journalists are more inclined to worry about the impact their reporting might have on audiences during emergencies. The result is a reduction in the negativity of the news about terrorism crises as compared to day-to-day terrorism beat reporting. Mapping the Terrorism Beat I compare the contending professional and profit-seeking models of news production to the record of actual terrorism beat reporting using a variety of data sources and research techniques in order to identify the model that maps that content most effectively. I examine the subject matter and language of the terrorism beat using qualitative and quantitative content A Very Bad News Beat?   19 2RPP analyses and a database of more than 4,000 articles published between 1997 and 2014 in the four newspapers with the largest circulation in the United States: New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Wash- ington Post. No study of terrorism beat reporting examines a larger chrono- logical period of news reports. I hold my thinking about the behavior of journalists during terrorism crises up to regression analyses that focus on the tone of the language that appears in articles published in English-language newspapers during six of the most significant terrorist attacks in US history: the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1996 Olympic Park bombing, the 9/11 attacks, the 2002 DC Sniper case, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and the 2016 Dallas police shooting. I examine the influence of terrorism beat content on news audiences using a simulation that draws on the work of Feick et al. (2021). I use a series of laboratory experiments to consider the impact of counterterrorism news on people’s sense of security from terrorism.1 Despite using experiments and regression analyses, this is principally a work of scientific description as Gerring (2012) conceives it: the cen- tral question in this book is about the patterns that define the terrorism beat’s content, rather than what causes the content to exhibit these char- acteristics. The methods I employ support this descriptive goal: content analysis for an accounting of the subjects covered on the terrorism beat; text analysis for an examination of the language terrorism beat report- ers use; regression to identify subtle changes in terrorism beat coverage through space and time; copy editing to assess whether negative language is used gratuitously by reporters (I explain this presently); and simulation and experiments to consider claims about the terrorism beat’s impact on audiences—a central feature of the complicit-media thesis’s critique of ter- rorism beat reporting. My contention is that the mapping of the terrorism beat that suggests it is a sensationalized area of news is descriptively inaccurate in several ways. A more precise atlas of the terrorism beat can be derived from work that is rooted in assumptions about the sociology and psychology of reporting. Some of these assumptions, such as the idea that rules and norms influence journalistic behavior, have been used to understand the practice of journal- ism in the past. Others, such as the idea that the quality of the reporting 1.  Data and analysis scripts for this book’s chapters are available on Simon Fraser University’s Summit data repository, accessible via https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.14327772​.cmp.11 https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.14327772.cmp.11 20   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP that journalists do during crises is influenced by the ways they construe the topics they cover, have not been applied to journalistic practice before. A challenge is finding criteria to assess the relative quality of the con- tending models (Gerring 2012). There is no Archimedean point for sensa- tional news. This means that the debate over the terrorism news beat might simply be a disagreement over different projections of the same underlying data, akin to differences between Mercator and polar (azimuthal equidis- tant) projection maps. My solution to this problem is to use the claims about sensationalism on the terrorism beat as the standards for assessing actual reporting prac- tices. When critics suggest that terrorism beat reporting is skewed toward the coverage of threats and attacks, I investigate that claim on the assump- tion that the relative mixture of topics is one of the terrorism beat’s impor- tant characteristics. Similarly, when critics say that the terrorism beat is getting more sensational in response to the worsening economic fortunes of newspapers, I investigate that claim by tracking the quality of coverage over time. Finally, when critics say that even the coverage of counterter- rorism intimidates audiences, I investigate that claim using experimental designs that expose participants to this type of reporting. Letting proponents of the complicit-media thesis set the terms of the debate over sensationalism does not mean that my analyses stop where these critiques end. The professional model suggests novel results that I examine. In chapter 3, for instance, I show that reporting on community responses to terrorism involves a good deal of coverage of resilient reac- tions to terrorist activity. In chapter 4, I show that the language used by reporters tends to be moderate rather than extreme. In chapters 5 and 6, I show that the terrorism beat becomes less negative shortly after major terrorist attacks. In chapter 7, I show that news from the terrorism beat is unlikely to transform fundamentally secure people into fundamentally insecure ones and that counterterrorism reporting can reassure people about their safety from terrorist violence. Since I am focused on the charge that the terrorism news beat intimi- dates audiences, however, there are some kinds of sensational reporting that I do not examine in depth. The use of “horse race” coverage, for example, is a form of sensationalized public-affairs reporting that I address only a bit, since it is not generally alleged that this coverage works to the advantage of terrorists. This book is not a comprehensive examination of sensational content on the terrorism news beat. A Very Bad News Beat?   21 2RPP At Stake in This Research Accurate description is a prerequisite for accurate explanation and prudent policy-making. My research suggests, however, that depictions of the ter- rorism news beat that academics and policy makers rely on are distorted. The terrorism beat is less sensationalized than generally alleged; it focuses more on counterterrorism than terrorism and delivers the news in moder- ate rather than extreme terms. The inability to see the terrorism beat more accurately encourages observers to treat the news media as a problem that can hobble anti-terrorism efforts by democracies rather than as an ally in these efforts. A consequence of this negative framing can be seen in research on the so-called encouragement effect (Picard 1986). This is the idea that news coverage of terrorist threats and attacks inspires additional terrorism (Rohner and Frey 2007; Jetter 2019a, 2019b) by imbuing violence with a kind of “seductive appeal” (Miller and Hayward 2019, 3) by boosting the morale and motivation of perpetrators and their comrades (Jetter 2019a), and by amplifying terrorism’s psychological (Silver et al. 2002; Aber et al. 2004) and political consequences (Davis and Silver 2004). These consequences work to the advantage of terrorists and the disad- vantage of the innocent people who are victimized. Combine this result with the additional observation that terrorists depend on publicity from the news media to sew fear on a mass scale and it becomes clear why the news media is often described as “the terrorists’ best friend” (Laqueur 2017, 104). The news media reliably helps terrorists achieve goals they otherwise could not. Since the news media makes terrorism worse, the big public policy question revolves around proposals to limit this tendency. Frey (2004) argues that the news media can be incentivized to provide reporting that is less sensational with subsidies for quality news. Forst (2011) calls for treating reporting about terrorism as a public health matter rather than an issue of press freedom. The public health framing would enable US courts to punish irresponsible reporting under the theory that “needlessly incen- diary media accounts of violence or threats of violence” (Forst 2011, 295) are akin to shouting “fire” in a crowded theater. Whether interventions like these are needed at all, however, depend on the characteristics of terrorism beat news that audiences receive. As critics suggest, a news media that focuses on terrorist threats and attacks largely 22   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP ignores counterterrorism and represents ordinary citizens as paralyzed by the specter of terrorism probably does the public more harm than good. In contrast, a news media that does more reporting on counterterrorism than terrorism, represents the public as resilient in the face of terrorism, and uses moderate language in its reporting is more difficult to decode. If indications that counterterrorism news (Zussman and Zussman 2006; Nacos, Bloch-Elkon, and Shapiro 2011) and other reassuring mes- sages (Silverman, Kent, and Gelpi 2022; Krause et al. 2022) can counter- act the intimidating effects of reporting about threats and attacks, then the argument for interfering with the news media becomes more tenuous. The research I present in chapter 5 suggests that both of these reassuring effects of exposure to terrorism beat news are possible. The implication is that the news media may counteract the efforts of terrorists to intimidate audiences in unrecognized ways and that the equation between the news media and public fear is too simple. Plan of the Book I lay out competing visions of the terrorism news beat in chapter 2. The orthodox view represents terrorism beat reporting as sensitive to economic pressures on the newspaper industry, which encourages the creation of sensational content. This profit-seeking model of news production is at the heart of claims that the news media undermines the public interest by amplifying the psychological effects of terrorist activity. In chapter 2, I also lay out the case for viewing the terrorism beat through the lens of professional norms and institutions that govern the production of news. Connecting with a sociological tradition in the study of journalism (e.g., Gaye 1978; Ryfe 2012), I develop a model of the ter- rorism beat that implies that the degradation in news standards identified by the complicit media thesis is overstated. Instead, I assume that strong news values and professional standards that traditionally have guided reporters continue to do so. Events change, but the way news about those events is developed has been relatively stable. I compare the expectations derived from the profit-seeking and profes- sional models to data I gathered on more than 4,000 newspaper articles published between 1997 and 2014 in chapters 3 and 4. In chapter 3, I focus on the subject matter of the terrorism beat—the topics that terror- A Very Bad News Beat?   23 2RPP ism beat reporters cover on a regular basis. In chapter 4, I examine the language of the terrorism beat—whether it has become more negative over time and the degree to which it relies on provocative words. In chapter 5, I consider the effects of the content that people read from the terrorism beat. Whether news from the terrorism beat intimidates can- not be determined through content analysis alone (Baum and Potter 2008; Soroka 2003). One person’s negative story is another’s neutral report. Con- necting what gets published to people’s reactions is necessary for getting a full picture of the news media’s contribution to public anxiety about terrorism. I use two approaches to examine the effects of negative language in news from the terrorism beat on people’s sense of security from terrorism. First, I use a simulation to suggest that the expected effects of exposure to news about threats and attacks on insecurity depends on the negativity of the news people get. When people are exposed to unusually negative reports, as they often are in academic studies, the expected effects on inse- curity are large. When the reports people read are more reflective of the material newspapers publish, however, the size of the effects on insecurity is attenuated. Second, I examine the effects of news about counterterrorism on people’s sense of security from terrorist threats and attacks. Some say that any cover- age of terrorism or counterterrorism is inherently alarming because it reminds people of danger. Chapter 5 examines this claim using a series of laboratory experiments. The idea is that the capacity for news coverage to intimidate depends on what that coverage depicts. Stories about effective counterterror- ism do not necessarily have the alarming quality critics worry about. Chapter 6 lays out the case for the alteration of professional norms on terrorism beat reporting during crises through a case study of the reporting on the Boston Marathon bombing. Building on the work on Sandman and Paden (1979b) and Trope and Liberman (2010), I argue that newspapers that covered the marathon bombing moderated the tone of the reporting they produced, especially for audiences who lived closest to the point of attack. This behavior is inconsistent with the notion that negativity is a dominant strategy for reporters. In the most fraught moments, journalists are more measured in their reporting. I replicate the results of this research on crisis reporting about the Bos- ton Marathon bombing using the coverage newspapers produced about the Oklahoma City bombing, the Olympic Park bombing, the 9/11 attacks, 24   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP the DC Sniper case, and the Dallas police shooting in chapter 7. Once again, I show that the negativity of the language reporters use to convey crisis events varies in ways the profit-seeking model does not anticipate. The average story published during a crisis is less negative than the average terrorism beat story published in non-crisis conditions. In addition, the stories published by news organizations that are the most proximate to the site of attacks are the least negative of all. In chapter 8, the final chapter of this book, I examine the implica- tions of my research. The news media is thought to make terrorism-related fears worse, but the evidence presented in this book suggests that this con- clusion is hasty. Some coverage may be alarming, but the most alarming reports are also rare. News from the terrorism beat is more likely to provide audiences a measured view of government counterterrorism than alarmist views of terrorist threats and attacks. Scope Conditions If drawing on material published in newspapers to understand how the news media covers the terrorism beat seems out of step with the times, it shouldn’t. The United States’ most widely circulated newspapers remain important sources of news, despite all the talk of social media and how consumer demand for free news is driving a crisis in the US newspaper industry. Consider that in 2020, the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post reached as many as 86.2 million peo- ple through Twitter (47.6 million, NYT; 18.1 million, WSJ; 4.1 million USAT; 16.4 million WaPo) and almost 40 million people via Facebook (17.54 million, NYT; 6.66 million, WSJ; 8.74 million, USAT; 6.78 mil- lion, WaPo). I rely on articles published in the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post in chapters 3 and 4. Even though fake news, conspiracy theories, and real news from television and internet news organizations also compete for news audiences’ attention, newspapers remain significant contributors to what people know about the world. This is especially the case with terrorism, since such a large portion of the material about terrorist threats and attacks falls into the category of foreign news (see chapter 3), which is still primarily produced by journalists who work for newspapers and wire services (e.g., Associated Press). A Very Bad News Beat?   25 2RPP Of course, the largest source of sensationalized news may be the images that both television and internet news sources use to a far greater extent than newspapers do. My inattention to the visual dimensions of the ter- rorism news beat, therefore, may understate the extent to which the main news sources that Americans consult dramatize terrorist activity. A more comprehensive picture of the terrorism beat must take this imagery into account. Still, it is worth remembering that the written terrorism beat news people receive has all the problems of televised news, even though images are not the newspaper journalist’s main tool for communicating informa- tion. Most of the research advancing claims about the declining quality of the terrorism beat focuses on newspaper reporting. Some even say that people who get their news from newspapers report more insecurity from terrorism than people who get their news from television and the internet (Williamson, Fay, and Miles-Johnson 2019). The point is that even if my account of the terrorism beat is partial, I am addressing the news sources that play an important role in shaping conceptions of terrorism reporting as sensationalized. Whether this dim take on the terrorism beat accurately represents the reporting produced by the United States’ most widely read newspapers is the central question of this book. The answer, I submit, is no. 2RPP 26 CHAPTER 2 Continuity, Change, and the Professional-Media Thesis Veteran journalist Dan Rather grudgingly agreed when Colombia’s presi- dent and Nobel Peace Prize winner Juan Manuel Santos said that news media reporting on terrorism made it harder to bring the insurgency his country experienced to an end. In Rather’s view, there were too many signs that journalists were putting their industry’s economic interests ahead of the public interest for Santos to be wrong. In Mexico, newspapers sold copies by displaying gruesome pictures of people murdered by drug gangs on their front pages. In the United States, news organizations covered the 9/11 attacks by publishing pictures of people leaping from the World Trade Center buildings to their deaths. The press’s obligations to provide the public responsible reporting were clearly getting lost (Rather 2012). Rather’s concerns about the news media are familiar ones. Journalism is often described as an occupation that requires reporters to sacrifice their principles in favor of selling the news to consumers. Instead of helping the public, as they are supposed to do, journalists do the opposite. They help terrorists sow fear by giving them attention and by exaggerating terror- ism’s dangers to the public (Weimann and Winn 1994). Reporters do this because exaggerated terrorism news is profitable. Treating reporters as if profit was their sole motivation, however, is not the only way to make sense of journalistic behavior. It is also possible to conceive of journalism as a rule-governed activity and journalists as rule followers. Journalists maintain this relationship to the rules of reporting for two reasons. They recognize the central role a free press plays in demo- Continuity, Change, and the Professional-Media Thesis   27 2RPP cratic societies, where the ability to hold people to account depends on the availability of information that is uncorrupted by powerful and self- interested parties (Alexander 2015). Journalists also adhere to the prin- ciples of news reporting because doing so keeps them in step with their peers and marks them as members of the community of reporters. In other words, to be a journalist means adhering to the normative standards that define that line of work. In this chapter, I detail these two models of news production and their implications for understanding the terrorism news beat, defined in terms of the range and variability of the content major newspapers publish. The profit-seeking and professionalism models of news production are the focus here because of the central roles they play in discussions of news as political communication. The profit-seeking model is the most widely cited model of news production in studies of the terrorism news beat. The professionalism model is the most prominent alternative to the profit- seeking model in the wider literature on political communication. There are other models of the news production process that could have been included in this work but were not. The partisan media (Patterson and Donsbagh 1996) and propaganda (Herman and Chomsky 1988) models of news production are at the top of this list. I passed on the par- tisan media model because the partisan bent of newspapers is unlikely to make a big difference in terrorism news beat reporting over time. Ter- rorism is one of the few issues in American politics that Democrats and Republicans largely agree upon. I also passed on the propaganda model of news production because it is a model of gatekeeping rather than a model of news presentation. The premise of the propaganda model is that wealthy and powerful elites “filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow government and private interests to get their messages across to the public” (Herman and Chomsky 1988, 2). Since I do not have systematic information about the stories that reporters on the terrorism beat could have published, it made sense to set this approach aside. Descriptive Models The two models I examine here are designed for the purpose of explor- ing the terrorism news beat in major US newspapers. The models provide 28   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP guides to the range and variability of the content we can expect newspapers in the US to have published about terrorist threats and attacks, counter- terrorism, and community responses to terrorism. The empirical chapters that follow examine the accuracy of these models in relation to samples of news content. Models in political science are typically used for causal inference (Clarke and Primo 2012), but using models for descriptive inference, as I do in this book, is an option as well. In fact, in their important work on the use of models in political science, Kevin Clarke and David Primo (2008) liken models to maps of subway systems, highway systems, and pedestrian walk- ways. Clarke and Primo draw these analogies because models help people navigate unfamiliar terrain. That is how I use the profit-seeking and profes- sionalism models that are the focus of this book—as guides to the twists and turns in content that quality newspapers in the US produce. My choice of these models, however, does not indicate that either of them are perfectly accurate. Like maps, both the profit-seeking and profes- sionalism models have limitations. These models are designed to answer questions about the qualities of terrorism beat reporting that appear in privately owned, for-profit newspapers in the United States that operated during a historical period in which the norms and practices of journalistic practice remained relatively stable. It is unclear whether these models have anything to say about what terrorism beat reporting would look like in a modern-day version of the Los Angeles Municipal News, a non-profit, tax- payer funded newspaper created in 1911 (Pickard 2020a). These models also provide little guidance about the content of news produced by news organizations that reject principles of journalistic practice, like the norm of objectivity. It is also questionable whether the models are capable of out- lining terrorism beat reporting outside the United States, since the practice of reporting often varies considerably from country to country (Mellado 2020). The design of the profit-seeking and professionalism models for descriptive purposes is also consequential for understanding what these models can and cannot do. As descriptive models, the profit-seeking and professionalism models can suggest what the terrorism beat’s contours look like, but they cannot explain the production of that content entirely (Ger- ring 2012). For instance, the profit-seeking model assumes that newspaper journal- ists, the employees of print news organizations who identify and investi- Continuity, Change, and the Professional-Media Thesis   29 2RPP gate stories to cover, sensationalize the news. This simplification creates an empirically verifiable claim about the quality of terrorism beat news, but it does not provide an accurate account of how terrorism beat coverage might become sensationalized. In reality, teams of people play roles in pro- ducing the content that gets published as news. The profit-seeking model is silent on the roles these teams play in the editorial process and how they might influence the content that newspapers produce, relying instead on the assumption that journalists do all the reporting work at newspapers. In return for this simplicity, the profit-seeking and professionalism models make the complexity of news production analytically tractable. The profit-seeking and professionalism models do this by isolating the fac- tors that, in their estimation, are most important for understanding the quality of the news audiences receive. Precisely what those factors are and how they influence news quality is the subject of the next sections. The Profit-Seeking Model of News Production The profit-seeking model of news production is the first model up for consideration. This model starts from the premise that news organizations are, at root, economic firms in the business of selling news to consumers. Profits are necessary for their survival (Hamilton 2006). The journalists and editors that news organizations employ understand that keeping their jobs means helping their employers advance their eco- nomic fortunes. Journalists accomplish this goal by focusing on the events that are most likely to command audience attention and presenting the news they gather in engaging ways. Competition from other news organi- zations creates constant pressure on reporters to keep up with their rivals (Boczkowski 2014). The Viability of Newspapers in the Internet Age Using these assumptions, proponents of the profit-seeking model under- stand the production of terrorism beat news to reflect the challenges of profiting from the sale of news in the 21st century. This is a period in which “the 150-year-old business model for commercial newspapers imploded” (Pickard 2020b). 30   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP For most of the 20th century, newspapers generated revenue from a mixture of advertising and hard-copy sales to readers. Advertisers provided most of the revenue, about 80 percent (Pickard 2020b), but these dollars always depended on the ability of newspapers to deliver audiences. Cir- culation became the single most important measure of each newspaper’s economic value to advertisers (Rucker 1958). The rise of internet news changed the formula the news industry used to generate revenue. Disseminating news electronically is significantly less expensive than printing and delivering news in physical formats. The dif- ference in costs enable digital news producers to use their advantage to cut into the audiences for physical news by offering to distribute and sell their products for less than traditional newspapers can do. The resulting loss of revenue is upending the market for physical newspapers. The immediacy of digital news also gives it an advantage over tradi- tional newspapers that makes it more attractive to consumers. Digital news can be delivered to audiences almost as quickly as digital news can be pro- duced. In contrast, physical news producers must wait to print new edi- tions before they can distribute the news to audiences. This speed advan- tage inclines the public to turn to internet news providers for their news instead of the slower traditional news producers (Hamilton 2006). Compounding the newspaper industry’s problems, the rise of digital advertising platforms, like Craigslist, further cut into the revenues tra- ditional news suppliers could generate. Smaller audiences already meant lower advertising revenues, but digital advertisers reduced demand for paid classified advertisements that newspapers depended on. These changes devastated traditional newspaper companies, put report- ers out of work, and created an “extinction level crisis” (Gabbatt 2020) in the newspaper industry. Knowing that bad news sells (Arango-Kure, Garz, and Rott 2014; Soroka 2014) and that people are drawn to stories that contain more negative words than positive ones (Albertson and Gadarian 2015; Trussler and Soroka 2014), newspapers responded to this economic crisis by sensationalizing the reporting they published (Fuller 2010). The terrorism beat became a useful vehicle for advancing this fear- mongering project (Altheide 2017). As ABC News anchor Peter Jennings explained, What accounts for the extraordinary intensity of media coverage of hijackings and hostage takings? Ratings? The answer is yes. We work Continuity, Change, and the Professional-Media Thesis   31 2RPP for commercial enterprises. We all want to be number one. Number one means dollars and cents to our corporations and so ratings are certainly important. Does it have to do with advertising revenue? Yes, I suppose it does, in that advertising revenue results from rat- ings. (quoted in Nacos 1994, 157) Tried and True Strategies Time and again, newspapers answered the economic challenges they faced by doubling down on formulas from the past. This meant four things. First, newspapers altered their coverage to emphasize reporting on terrorist threats and attacks over counterterrorism. Second, instead of reporting on the broad range of counterterrorism measures governments pursued, news- papers narrowed their reporting on counterterrorism to those operations that either involved the use of military force or obviously failed. Third, newspapers declined to cover public reactions to terrorism and counterter- rorism, leaving the impression that terrorists were successfully intimidat- ing the populace. Finally, newspapers supported their content choices by injecting their coverage with language that was deliberately designed to amplify the sense of threat from terrorism. Terrorist Threats and Attacks vs. Counterterrorism Since at least the 1980s, the conventional wisdom in newsrooms has been that stories about terrorist threats and attacks are especially valuable (Burgoon, Bur- goon, and Wilkinson 1983). Terrorism’s dramatic qualities align with the prin- ciples journalists use to identify newsworthy events and the principles audi- ences use to identify stories to follow (Schmid 1989). From the standpoint of news sales, terrorism enables news organizations to boost revenues. Aside from enabling news organizations to meet audience demand, reporting on threats and attacks allowed newspapers to present terrorism beat news differently from other public affairs topics. The perpetrators of violence emerged as the focus of terrorism beat news, while the importance of government sources and perspectives got downgraded (Nacos 1994). In effect, reporting about terrorist threats and attacks pushed reporting about counterterrorism out of the news. 32   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP Indicative of this shift, between 1996 and 2000 the New York Times, National Public Radio, ABC, NBC, and CBS (the United States’ three main television networks) used the word “terrorism” 11,000 times, as com- pared to about 2,400 uses of the word “counterterrorism” (Nacos 2007). A follow-up study by Nacos, Bloch-Elkon, and Shapiro (2011) identified a similar pattern: over a 39-month period following the 9/11 attacks, net- work news shows covered terrorism 385 times, but dedicated only 85 seg- ments to terrorism prevention. Terrorists, Nacos noted, got all the media coverage they wanted (1994, 22). Military vs. Nonmilitary Counterterrorism Efforts Governments, on the other hand, struggled to capture press attention unless they involved the military (Nacos 2007). Marsden (2013) notes, for example, that the Western press reported on the post-9/11 War on Terror as if it were principally a military effort, even though the US gov- ernment used a range of tactics to reduce the threat of future attacks. In the United States, news about anti-terrorism measures, including reports commissioned by Congress detailing terrorist threats, anti-terrorism legis- lation, and the state of government preparedness for terrorist attacks, were conspicuous in their absence in major newspapers (Nacos 2007). Keystone Cops Frustratingly for governments, the only other counterterrorism events journalists were interested in are those that involved conspicuous counter- terrorism failures (Jenkins 1982; Nacos 2007; Marsden 2013). As a result, reporting on government counterterrorism efforts often portrayed govern- ments as “reactive, impotent, [and] incompetent” (Jenkins 1982, 17). Invisible People Reporters on the terrorism beat also covered community responses to terrorism less often than news about either terrorist threats and attacks or news about counterterrorism (Moeller 2009). The coverage newspa- Continuity, Change, and the Professional-Media Thesis   33 2RPP pers did provide was decidedly negative, focused on terrorism’s tragic and frightening qualities rather than on the public’s resiliency to these attacks (Nacos 2007). Sensational Language Newspapers supported their content choices by sensationalizing the lan- guage they used in terrorism beat coverage. Working from the premise that “fear gets your eyeballs” (Edward Hallowell quoted in ABC News 2007), journalists started delivering a more shocking brand of news. For newspa- pers, this meant injecting the news with the words “fear” and “victim” and other unnecessarily provocative language to accentuate the state of insecu- rity terrorists caused (Altheide 2017; Moeller 2009). This reporting change also meant increasing the use of negative words relative to positive ones in terrorism beat reporting. The idea was that writ- ing in more provocative ways would make newspapers into a more profit- able product. “Threats, danger, fear. These words grab the attention of readers. And that’s what the media want. Your attention. Be afraid. Be very afraid” (Moeller 2009). The crime beat provided the proof of concept for this approach (Altheide 2017; Krajicek 1998). In the 1990s, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox tele- vision network demonstrated the economic potential of treating crime as entertainment with the successful television show Hard Copy. Thereafter, news organizations, including those that banked on their reputations for quality, began covering crime in more sensational terms. Even in newspa- pers like the New York Times and the Washington Post, the dry language of traditional hard news gave way to more provocative writing (Krajicek 1998). The opportunity to test the crime beat’s successful formula on the ter- rorism beat came after 9/11. Reporters hammered home messages that conveyed a strong “sense of disorder and belief that things are out of con- trol” (Altheide 2017, 90). The discourse of fear, indicated by the reliance on the words “fear” and “victim” in terrorism beat reporting, skyrocketed. Prior to 9/11, these staples of the crime beat rarely appeared in terrorism beat news. After 9/11, reports using the words “fear” and “victim” became ubiquitous. In the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, San Francisco Chron- icle, USA Today, and Washington Post, the number of terrorism beat articles 34   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP containing the word fear increased by at least a factor of ten. At the San Francisco Chronicle, reporters published 45 times more articles containing the word fear after 9/11 than before (Altheide 2017). Taking another page from their crime beat counterparts, reporters for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, and Washington Post also used the words “fear” and “victim” together at an increased rate. The New York Times produced nearly ten times (9.86) more articles using both the words “fear” and “victim” after 9/11 than it did prior to the attacks. USA Today increased the number of articles using the words “fear” and “victim” by a factor of thirty. News from the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and USA Today fell between these extremes (Altheide 2017). Crisis Reporting The sensationalized reporting patterns journalists relied on to offset their operating losses got interrupted during crises—for the worse. The reason for this has to do with some peculiar aspects of the economics of information. In the short term, crises increase both audience demand for news (Althaus 2002) and the price of covering the news (Bakker 2015). People want news more during crises out of a heightened sense that the string of unexpected events that happen in rapid succession are especially impact- ful. At the same time, the news media must invest more resources into covering crises to keep track of these rapidly evolving events. These added costs include expenditures that news organizations make to hire additional reporters as well as premiums that news organizations pay to keep their employees safe in crisis environments (Bakker 2015). In many industries, firms can increase prices to offset increased produc- tion costs, but short-term price increases are difficult to implement in the newspaper industry, which tends to generate revenues through subscrip- tions. Increasing prices, therefore, would require news organizations to engage in costly contract renegotiations with consumers (Bakker 2015). Instead, newspapers tried to offset the increased costs of reporting during crises by selling more copies. This meant giving into incentives to distort the news more using sensational language. Bad news sells (Arango-Kure, Garz, and Rott 2014); bad news in bad times sells more. Continuity, Change, and the Professional-Media Thesis   35 2RPP Implications of the Profit-Seeking Model Between its starting assumptions and its account of the newspaper indus- try’s recent economic history, the profit-seeking model paints a picture of terrorism beat reporting that is designed to alarm audiences and reactive to bottom-line pressures on newspapers. Given the dire state of the tradi- tional newspaper industry, the profit-seeking model’s basic assessment of terrorism beat reporting is that it underwent a period of change, becoming more alarming and more sensational as profitability declined. Coverage shifted toward news about threats and attacks, and the language journalists used became immoderate. Subject Matter Expectations The profit-seeking model suggests that terrorist threats and attacks domi- nate the terrorism news beat, appearing more often in newspapers than either counterterrorism news or reporting about community responses to terrorism (Nacos 2007). This preference for news about terrorist threats and attacks increases as the newspaper industry’s economic fortunes wors- ens. This pattern reflects terrorism’s economic value to newspapers. Audi- ences are willing to pay for news about terrorist activity. Government counterterrorism efforts typically make the news either when those efforts involve the use of military force or when they fail in obvious ways. Otherwise, counterterrorism gets short shrift in newspa- pers. Criminal justice proceedings against suspected terrorists, govern- ment hearings and reports, diplomatic agreements relating to terrorism, and other nonviolent ways governments try to control terrorism are too boring to sell papers. Consequently, newspapers exclude stories like these from their pages. Linguistic Expectations Another way economic pressure on the newspaper industry manifests itself is in the language journalists use to deliver terrorism beat news to audi- ences. Like other news beats (Soroka 2014), the terrorism news beat fea- tures more negative language than positive language, but the willingness of 36   The Terrorism News Beat 2RPP journalists to use negative language increased as their newspapers struggled to turn profits. This shift in approach began after the 9/11 attacks (Altheide 2017). In an effort to sell fear, journalists increased their use of the words “fear” and “victim” since these specific words helped news organizations sensational- ize the crime beat. The overall use of negative language increased as did gratuitous uses of provocat