My dad always enforced the idea of taking every piece of information given to me with a grain of salt. He is a bit of a skeptic, sometimes for the worse, but his intentions are good. He wants me to be able to listen to, or read a piece of information, and not take it for face value.

This idea of being cautious when absorbing information is extremely necessary in todays society. On July 14, 2016, there was a terrorist attack in Nice, France. When reading two different news source (The New York Times, and CNN), I was given conflicting information. One source said 77 people had died, and another claimed 84 people had died. What tends to happen in the event of a terrorist attack, is that the public wants immediate information. But what needs to be understood, is that the government, and news sources need time. They need time to gather all the truthful information. But because the public wants immediate satisfaction, there is always conflicting information between news sources, and almost always everyone will report wrong information in the immediate aftermath.

News sources are notorious for blaming the wrong individual as the attacker. This is often referenced as scapegoating. News sources do this in order to give the public a face, which then makes the public feel like they have all the information. But when the real attacker is found, it is very hard for the public to let go of that initial face.

If a terrorist organization is wrongfully blamed, they will not say otherwise. They want people to freak out because they were overestimated or underestimated in their abilities. Once the victims are caught by surprise, the blamed terrorist organization receives major attention. However, in regards to the attack in Nice, no terrorist organization took responsibility for the attack for a significant amount of time, but people were already saying ISIS was responsible for the attack. Lindsey Graham of MSNBC, was quoted saying, “ISIS is coming to kill us all.” There’s a certain theatre and show ISIS has achieved throughout its attacks. And they are achieving exactly what they want. They want people to believe they are all powerful, so that the public becomes scared.

Another error in the reporting of terrorist attacks is referencing the attacker as a “mastermind.” Sometimes the attacker is called the “brain” of the attack. The public needs an evocative word to create a false comfort. Calling the attacker a “mastermind,” gives the public a reason and rational as to how or why this person did what they did. But in reality, the attacker is most often a working class person with an idea, and in the moment begins shooting.

Society needs to abandon the idea of glorifying a terrorist attacker. It causes us to lose our senses, which is exactly was the terrorist wants.