While media dissemination of events helps the terrorist cause by spreading the terror, anything which causes a change in the way people do things is effective.
Something under is bus is no biggie, but even the most downplaying article plants the thought in the minds of bus travellers that the bus might have a bomb underneath.
For nay bus company, that means failure to assuage the doubts of their passengers translates to decreased revenue, with the inevitable effect that now a great show will be made of checking under the bus.
Small, subtle perhaps, but effective in that resources have been tied up in hiring people to conspicuously wheel around mirrors to check for bombs so the passengers are happy.
While the driver should be fully capable, someone in a uniform wearing a badge would be more 'convincing' in the public eye, so resources are allocated to alleviate the presumed threat.
Any act which instills fear or causes a behavioural change in the target population is effective. While blood in the streets and collapsing buildings might be very effective, they also cause a reaffirmation of national resolve in Americans, a 'get the SOBs who did this' mentality, rather than the more stressful feeling of being less than secure in one's home country, a feeling of security which most Americans take for granted.
In this instance, "it could have been a bomb" is likely more effective psychologically than images of shattered (even children's) bodies on the TV. While the latter would cause grief in many, it would cause anger in many more, while the former causes ongoing doubt.
But if there is no article there is no tiny thought in anyone’s mind. .
This article is from MyFox Orlando, did it get picked up anywhere else? I didn’t see it.
“If it bleeds it leads.” No blood no national news.
If this was an act of a terrorist it was pretty ineffective because it got mentioned in the news in only one metro area and because the device could not be identified as a bomb its impact there was negligible.
I don’t really buy your comment on anger either. True a certain part of the public would be angered by a terrorist blowing up children. But one lesson I have learned from 9-11 about the public’s anger against terrorist is that with out the press keeping that anger alive it is not sustained.
The national press made a conscious decision some time after the 9-11 attacks to play down the terrorist attack. With out the occasional reminder of the outrage of the unprovoked attacks on innocents in this country the public’s anger dissipated and the anger shifted to the countries leader a Republican President.
Perhaps things would be different now that the President is a Democrat. Perhaps the press would be more supportive of anti-terrorist activities but I don’t think so. The press is still hesitant to use the word terrorist. And the press still seems to be very anti-war.