Doing without sensationalism, London’s newspaper the Independent and Italian paper Il Fatto quotidiano decided to inform readers about the Isis by keeping the necessary objectiveness. Only news about hostages captured by terrorists will be given, but no room will be left to shocking images, proclamations or emotional reactions that would help enhance the terrorists’ visibility. The communicative strategy of those groups is in fact too patent, their members being digital natives, experts of the Internet and the social media. The aim of this strategy is to mobilise the international public opinion at the most and demonstrate the power of terrorists and their challenge. For some time the British press has tried to diminish the extremist propaganda not referring their insults to Western leaders, but this isn’t a solution to the problem.
The world of information is faced by the dilemma whether to practice its right and duty of giving news through and through or to limit it because of the influence that could result to the terrorists by the exercise of this democratic practice.
This reminds the question if delivering information about terrorism means also to legitimate it in a certain way. This is a difficult choice and the important thing is to maintain a balanced point of view, all the more so the use and the control - even indirect – of the media put itself as one of the instruments through which the war against western world by Isis and other terroristic groups is practiced. Self assessment of terrorism passes also through its capacity of sparking discussions, which it pursues at all costs, including the macabre propaganda of its murders. Part of the Western press has started fighting back.