Bruce Allen Scharlau PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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the 1977 hijacked Lufthansa plane, 'Landshut'. He was murdered because
the terrorists heard over the radio that he had smuggled out information
to the authorities, and for taking too long-
-due to Yerneni soldiers
around the plane- -in returning from checking the landing gear after an
emergency landing.56
Al though all acts that are the same should have the same label, the
media usually use the definitions of violence that are passed on to them
from their information sources- -mainly the government with regard to
terrorism. This does not deny that in other cases the news media have
more information than the authorities, as is the case when they obtain
interviews with suspected terrorists. The police, in some
of these
cases, have an information superiority over the media, who have
editorial deadlines. The government can therefore preselect and
offensively present their information to the media, which may be doubly
handicapped. The media can become source dependent upon the government
sources and wittingly, or unwittingly! disseminate government opinion.
This can lead to news about terrorism that has no basis in reali ty ,
while other terrorist acts are never heard about, both of which distort
public perceptions of terrorism.57
One example is the alleged theft of fifty-three mustard gas
canisters from an army depot by the Red Army Faction that was reported
in the press. Later the theft of the gas canisters was linked by the
Bundeskriminalamt with a supposed gas attack on the Bundestag. Several
months later the canisters were 'found', and their 'loss' attributed to
inaccurate inventories. 5 8 The original report about the gas canisters
has been included by authors who did not see the later corrections.59
Alternatively the government can suppress information from terrorist
groups to enable it to create favourable conditions for policy
implementation. In Stuttgart, press reports stated that the Red Army
Faction planned to bomb the city centre on 2 June 1972. Before then a
BKA authenticated RAF statement sent to several newspaper editors
claimed this was a false report planted, most likely, by the police. The
government suppressed the communique! and the result was a beleaguered
Stuttgart on 2 June with thousands of police checking roads, vehicles
and 'suspicious persons'. The government had created conditions
favourable to the introduction of rewards, which, they felt, could only
56 A.H. Miller, 25-6, 29; Aust (1987), 521-2.
57 A.H. Miller, 17-8; Schmid, de Graaf l 64-5, 93.
58 Cobler (1978), 45-7, contains this example and others concerning
false reports of terrorist activities and their actual explanations.
59 see how Robert H. Kupperrnann uses these canisters in: Alexander,
Finger (1979), 60; and Wilkinson (1986)1 149.