Terrorist experts are saying that Fox News’ decision to show all 23 unedited minutes of the Jordanian pilot’s death, “empowers ISIS.” Another terrorist expert said that Fox News is propagating “exactly what ISIS wants to propagate.”
In other words, Fox News is helping ISIS spread their message.
YouTube removed a link to the video a few hours after it was posted there, and a spokesperson for Facebook told the Guardian that if anyone posted the video to the social networking site, “it would come down.”
The television network’s decision to host the footage drew criticism from terrorism analysts.
Malcolm Nance, the executive director of the Terror Asymmetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics and Radical Ideology think tank and an expert on counter-terrorism and radical extremism told the Guardian that by posting the video Fox News was propagating “exactly what Isis wants to propagate.”
“The whole value of terror is using the media to spread terror,” he said.
Rick Nelson, a senior associate in homeland security and terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that posting the video actually empowers Isis.
Related: Pilot’s murder may weaken Jordanian support for role in anti-Isis campaign
“They’re a terror organisation,” he said. “They seek to strike terror in the hearts and minds of people globally, and by perpetuating these videos and putting them out there into the internet, it certainly expands the audience and potential effects.”
