27Percent, Baudrillard

 In this article, Baudrillard is explaining the medias influence on our perception of terrorism. He begins by telling us that images are one of the most important factors that occurs in an act of terrorism. We may not always remember the exact incident, but we will always remember the images of the day and the feelings that come about when we see those images, “…what we retain, since the images are, whether we like it or not, our primal scene” (Baudrillard, 228). The images we see in the mass media completely consume the horrific events that they capture and are then exposed around the world globally.

            Something that sparked an specific instance in my mind is when Baudrillard was talking about media’s exposure of violence. He states, “There is no ‘good’ use of the media; the media are part of the event, they are part of the terror, and they work in both directions” (Baudrillard, 229). The Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings that occurred last December is a clear act of terrorism. This event took place and affected the lives of innocent children and staff of a local middle school in Connecticut. The media coverage following the event heavily focused on the shooters and can almost be considered ‘glorifying’ these terrorists. In this case, at first the media was providing wrong and misleading information to the public and then solely focused on coverage of these villains. This leads to another aspect of a “terrorists’ victory” (230) where different acts of violence and the disruption of direction are linked back and given credit to this single terrorist. All of these forms act in the villains’ favor. This way, when it is covered in the media, the news is creating even more terrorism. A case of violence that has had much controversy is an act of violent racism known as the Zimmerman trial. The young black boy was shot and killed by a white man in an act of “self defense.” This trial has seen major headlines in the news and has been arguably a crime committed due to racism. Events such as this trial occur all of the time, but this particular one was exposed through the media and heavily covered. Many crimes like this are pardoned, unless they are given media exposure.