World News Engine: The media needs a villain

The media needs a villain

The dramatics were in full force by late Sunday evening Washington time. CNN was calling the coming speech by American President Barack Obama “the most important speech he will make” as president. Then the people began flowing toward the White House, chanting “USA, USA” as the announcement that “terror suspect number one” Osama bin Laden had been killed by the US military in a raid.

The reactions from the media were to be expected;

bin Laden had been the focal point of the “War on Terror” for nearly a decade since September 11, 2001. He was the enemy, so the pomp and circumstance given to his killing shouldn’t have come as a surprise to those who have followed the Western media’s coverage of global events, especially when Islam is involved, over the past few years.

First it was Osama, then Saddam, then Mahmoud, then Osama, then Muammar and again Osama. Bin Laden has always taken the cake in terms of radical Islam and anti-Americanism. He deserved much of the anger, for he was the one who purported a war against the West, attacked embassies, civilians and military targets with little restraint. But in the end, he was the villain, the Lex Luther to Superman, and with his death will undoubtedly see the crumbling of the Daily Planet’s number one fallback criminal for all things evil in the Islamic world. I mean, of course, Western media.

Let’s put things into reality. The death of bin Laden will, unfortunately, do little to curtail the wave of anti-West sentiments. Radical Islamic leanings have been seen in Egypt, where with the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak, the so-called Salafis – those who adhere to a literal interpretation of the Quran – have been more forceful in voicing their illicit attacks on non-Muslims. Radical Islam was not birthed by bin Laden and it won’t die with him.

Certainly, there is some solace that the face of al-Qaeda – the most fervent force in violent radical Islam – is now gone. But already, the media are attempting to create a new enemy, a new image of what we are supposed to hate. They have talked of clerics in the Gulf who are recruiting new “soldiers of Islam” to continue the fight against Western ideals.

“They understand the new social media world and are on Facebook,” said one CNN announcer in the lead up to Obama’s speech. The PR campaign was in full force, even before the president was able to tell the nation that the man the US government had allegedly been searching for a decade had been killed.

The media has always wanted a villain. During the Cold War it was the Communists, whether the Soviet Union, China or Cuba. With the end of the Cold War in 1991, we had to search for new enemies, new faces for our continued brainwashing of American and Western societies.

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