Even in his death, Osama bin Laden made the cover of almost every newspaper in the world and the global media became fascinated by the news that he was dead.
Torin Douglas reports in the BBC’s newspaper review an exposition of the media reaction to the death of Osama Bin Laden and describes the media reaction as extortionate.
The Guardian newspaper had a two page spread of news, and a web gallery, of US newspaper front pages, reporting the death of Osama Bin Laden (Pictured Below).[1] The Times had 23 pages of coverage, headlined with a quote from President Obama: "Justice is done".
In al-Sharq al-Awsat, a pan-Arab newspaper, Hussein al-Shabakshy stated:
“The reaction of the Arab public has been varied. Some refuse to believe he was just killed because—according to them—he was "already dead": how else could his prolonged silence be explained? And then of course, various conspiracy theories are now being threaded together which cast doubt on the whole story and on the pictures (despite their being leaked by the Pakistani authorities and not the Americans). But others just don't care because, for them, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are old news—remnants of a more troubled and past age... Bin Laden's death is being treated in the Arab press as if a head of state just passed away; this is worrying because the public's distraction will cost Deraa and Mesrata dearly.”[2]
An Eqyptian newspaper stated:
“God have mercy on Osama bin Laden… He did everything he thought he could to serve the Muslim cause. But in the end, if America and Israel had launched a multi-trillion dollar campaign to demonise Muslims, they couldn’t have done a better job… Al-Qaeda ended up killing more Muslims than anyone else. They inflicted indescribable damage on the Muslim nation, while failing to inflict any real damage on the West…For us to confront the West, we need to be strong. But we will only become strong when we become free, well-educated citizens of democratic nations. If we could achieve that, Israel would not be able to push us around—the West would not be able to occupy our lands. Who knows—maybe they would start giving us the respect we deserve without us having to fire a single shot.”
In the Syrian al-Watan newspaper, the author wrote:
“Al-Qaeda as an organisation hijacked the words Islam and Muslims, and put them into the same pot as terrorism. After the attacks on September 2001, Muslims were branded with the word "terrorism". The Bush administration adopted a philosophy of "if you're not with us, you're against us". Today, with all the "dancing and joy" in front of the White House over the death of bin Laden, the American administration didn’t quite get the message: that the death of the hatred that bin Laden and his organisation represented for so long does not mean the end of "terrorism". That will be determined by actions, not theory, of the American administrations when it comes to the people of the Islamic world including the Palestinian issue.”[3]
The response to the death of Osama bin Laden was unprecedented. In his death he was almost on the front page of every newspaper in the world.
Again, I think you need to offer more than just some examples. Why is his death so significant to the media? What can you draw from this media attention? How does this relate to concepts from the course, such as newsworthiness, fear of crime, moral panic and terrorism? You need to do more than just report a crime story.
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