Terrorism

Terrorism. What comes to mine? Bin Laden? or perhaps anyone that may come or look Middle Eastern? Our media has placed a stereotype on this term that terrorism only applies to Islamic Extremist.

Example: Fort Hood, Texas November 5, 2009. We all know what happened that day when a member of the United States Army shot and killed a number of people on the base. In response to this the media on every network was covering this event. The words they used to explain this was anything but terrorism. After investigation it was concluded that the shooter was apart of Islamic Extremist groups, but one doesn't have to be affiliated with Islam to be a terrorist.

Terrorism
–noun
1.
the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
2.
the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3.
a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/terrorism)

Today I recent read that an airplane flew into a building in downtown Austin, Texas. I only knew of this because a peer posted this on his/her status on facebook. I didn't care to read the details of the event because the next few weeks the news will share more than what I want to know. However in this posting he/she wrote that "terrorism is not suspected." How is terrorism not suspected? That defines terrorism. Has media warped our way in thinking that terrorism only happens when the suspect is Islamic? Yes. It is very obvious! The notorious Timothy McVeigh from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist. Was he a white American? Yes. However if that even were to happen today he would not been seen as a terrorist. Wait... The same type of even did happen today and yes he is not considered a terrorist.

This is just one of millions of examples how the media warps the minds of its viewers. I once thought that the media should be better monitored so that biases and propaganda would be left out of the news. Now I think that it is the responsibility of the people to find out what is fact and fiction. Americans will believe what they want to believe. The media doesn't change that but they play on what Americans want for viewers, readers, etc..