%0 Report
        %A Jetter, Michael
        %T Terrorism and the Media: The Effect of US Television Coverage on Al-Qaeda Attacks
        %D 2017
        %8 2017 Apr
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 10708
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp10708
        %X Can media coverage of a terrorist organization encourage their execution of further attacks? This paper analyzes the day-to-day news coverage of Al-Qaeda on US television since 9/11 and the group's terrorist strikes. To isolate causality, I use disaster deaths worldwide as an exogenous variation that crowds out Al-Qaeda coverage in an instrumental variable framework. The results suggest a positive and statistically powerful effect of CNN, NBC, CBS, and Fox News coverage on subsequent Al-Qaeda attacks. This result is robust to a battery of alternative estimations, extensions, and placebo regressions. One minute of Al-Qaeda coverage  in a 30-minute news segment causes approximately one attack in the upcoming week, equivalent to 4.9 casualties, on average.
        %K media effects
%K media attention
%K Al-Qaeda
%K terrorism
%K 9/11