Media, War & Conflict

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News narratives of terrorism: Assessing source diversity and source use in

UK news coverage of alleged Islamist plots
Jamie Matthews
Media, War & Conflict 2013 6: 295
DOI: 10.1177/1750635213505189

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505189
2013
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Media, War & Conflict

6(3) 295­–310
News narratives of terrorism: © The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1750635213505189
and source use in UK news mwc.sagepub.com

coverage of alleged Islamist

plots

Jamie Matthews
Bournemouth University, UK

Abstract
During the later years of Tony Blair’s premiership it was suggested that information provided by
‘well-placed sources’ to journalists concerning a series of alleged Islamist plots was unreliable,
with this material leaked to the media in an attempt to maintain or accentuate public awareness
of terrorism. This article seeks to assess these claims by identifying the prominence and role of
official sources and elucidating the characteristics of source use in news reporting on alleged
terrorist plots. Through a content analysis of UK national newspaper coverage, the article presents
a complex picture of source use and influence. The findings reveal that anonymous sources and
veiled references to public institutions were predominant within coverage. Contrary to ideological
theories of political discourse, however, government sources were not influential in presenting
details about a specific threat. The analysis shows that journalists’ use of sources was pragmatic
and that source use was indicative of a broader shift in the media discourse of terrorism during
the period of study, with more recent coverage addressing public concerns over the way official or
government sources communicated information about the threat from terrorism.

Keywords
alleged plots, journalism, news sources, newspapers, primary definers, terrorism

Introduction
Since the attacks of September 11 2001, UK government statements on the terrorist
threat have almost exclusively related to Islamist and radical Jihadist groups, despite the

Corresponding author:
Jamie Matthews, Media School, Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole BH12 5BB, UK.
Email: jmatthews@bournemouth.ac.uk

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296 Media, War & Conflict 6(3)

UK facing a historic and sustained risk of political violence from paramilitary groups in
Northern Ireland (Miller and Sabir, 2012). The bombings and attempted bombings in
London in July 2005 evidenced the substantial threat posed by ‘home-grown’ Islamists
identifying with the ideologies of Al-Qaeda, and ensured that policies designed to miti-
gate this risk became a central concern for Tony Blair’s government. Some have argued,
however, that the way this threat was communicated was disproportionate to the risk it
posed to the British public and served to legitimise a raft of controversial policy deci-
sions (Jackson, 2005). While it is difficult to verify these claims, it is without doubt that
the later years of Tony Blair’s premiership were punctuated by periods of intense focus
on specific terrorist-related incidents, with discourse around these events clearly associ-
ated with the efficacy and legitimacy of the government’s policy responses to terrorism.
The period between 2003 and 2008, in particular, was characterised by the police and
security services thwarting a number of high-profile terrorist plots, with many reported
by the UK news media as emerging crises, typified by coverage that was at times both
speculative and sensationalist. As these reported threats remained unsubstantiated or
were, subsequently, proved false, it led some to assert that foiled plots were being delib-
erately misrepresented or spun by the Labour government in an attempt to accentuate the
severity of the threat from Islamist terrorism (Miller and Sabir, 2012; Oborne, 2006).
Specifically, that government officials were providing sensitive operational and intelli-
gence information regarding the nature of these foiled terrorist plots to journalists in an
attempt to influence how these events were reported. Following news of an alleged plot
to kidnap a serving British soldier in 2007, it was claimed, for example, that journalists
were informed about the plot through a series of secret briefings conducted with security
personnel and government officials (Cobain et al., 2007; Morris, 2007).
To explore the prominence of official sources in defining and shaping UK news nar-
ratives to alleged terror plots, this article examines the diversity of sources and conven-
tions of source use across news coverage of five Islamist plots. The trigger event for the
research is the run up to the invasion of Iraq in January 2003, with the analysis continu-
ing through the final year of Tony Blair’s premiership, up until the end of January 2008.
During this period a range of terrorist or terrorist-related episodes occurred, including the
London bombings in July 2005. The purpose of this study, however, is to focus on those
incidents that were linked to a specific alleged terrorist plot. By analysing press coverage
across five suspected plots, this study seeks to provide an empirical record of the diver-
sity and conventions of source use, ascertain the prominence of official sources and
assess which sources were acting as the primary definers of these episodes.

The Blair government and the UK terror threat

The decision taken by Tony Blair and the UK government to provide military support for
the US-led invasion of Iraq was contentious. Three months into military operations in
Iraq, following a controversial claim by BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan in June 2003
that the UK government had exaggerated Iraq’s capability to launch weapons of mass
destruction, polls indicated that confidence in the conduct of Tony Blair and his com-
munications advisor, Alistair Campbell, had fallen sharply (YouGov, 2004). For some,
Gilligan’s allegation, which questioned an unconvincing assertion in a key intelligence

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dossier about Saddam Hussein’s capability to launch weapons of mass destruction within
45 minutes, provided further evidence of the Blair government’s policy of misinforma-
tion and spin (Oborne, 2006). Others have claimed that since the invasion of Iraq was
legitimised as part of the wider ‘War on Terrorism’, it reflected the efforts of political
elites to construct a public discourse of fear and threat around Islamist terrorism to
enhance support for a range of political objectives (Jackson, 2005).
This longitudinal analysis of news coverage of alleged terrorist plots, therefore,
begins on January 2003, covering the months preceding the invasion of Iraq in March
2003. It includes the first major story post 9/11 to suggest a specific threat to the UK
from an Islamist plot, where reports in early January 2003 alleged that an anti-terrorist
raid in north London had uncovered a significant quantity of ricin poison which was to
be used by radical Islamists to target towns and cities across the UK.
Involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan represented the UK’s most signifi-
cant foreign interventions during Blair’s term as prime minister. Alongside these interna-
tional policy decisions, the Labour government introduced domestic legislation that both
strengthened existing and established new police and judicial anti-terrorism powers. A
raft of polices aimed at mitigating the threat from Islamist terrorism were proposed by
the Labour government at the start of the new parliamentary session in November 2004.
Significantly, these measures were announced after news had emerged of two further
high profile plots, the first of which alleged that the home of Manchester United football
club was an intended target for a liquid bomb and a second which claimed that security
services had foiled a plot to imitate the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps most controversial of these
special measures was the proposed introduction of compulsory identification cards.
Scholars and commentators alike have suggested that to make such policy responses
politically acceptable to the electorate the Labour government either exaggerated
(Jackson, 2005) or ‘persistently failed to tell the truth either to itself or the British public’
about the risk presented by terrorism (Oborne, 2006: 34).
The threat from Islamist terrorism became more immediate following the bombings
and attempted bombings in London in July 2005. The Labour government’s policy
response to these events was the introduction of the Terrorism Act 2006, which in its
initial reading contained a proposal to increase pre-charge detention limits of up to 90
days for those suspected of terrorist offences. Despite strong public support for the meas-
ure (YouGov, 2005), it faced substantial parliamentary opposition, with civil liberties
groups also highly critical of a policy which they suggested ‘far exceeded pre-charge
detention limits in other comparable democracies’ (Liberty, 2007).
After an anti-terror raid in June 2006 on a home in Forest Gate, east London, ended
with one of the occupants being shot (BBC News, 2006), a more critical discourse
emerged in mainstream media about the threat posed by contemporary terrorism. This
influenced how later terrorist incidents were reported by the media and the discursive
debates that emanated from these episodes. When reports surfaced, therefore, that the
UK security apparatus had foiled a plot to target transatlantic airlines in August 2006,
columnists expressed reservations about the integrity of intelligence information that had
precipitated earlier anti-terrorism raids, such as the operation in Forest Gate (Donovan,
2006), and criticised the government’s handling of the story by suggesting that the Home
Secretary may have exaggerated the seriousness of the plot (Glover, 2006).

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298 Media, War & Conflict 6(3)

As part of this more critical vein, media reporting on terrorism also began to focus on
the impact of anti-terrorism operations on the UK’s Muslim communities. Media report-
ing on an alleged kidnap plot in February 2007, the final episode included in this study,
reflects this shift, where news narratives recalled the outcome of previous police raids
and explored how the allegations and arrests were impacting on social cohesion in the
communities disrupted by police operations (Burns and Gutherie, 2007; The Daily
Express, 2007).
This article examines one facet of media coverage of the post-9/11 terrorist threat,
exploring the diversity of sources appearing in news reporting on a series of alleged ter-
rorist plots which came to light in the final years of Tony Blair’s premiership. It presents
empirical data on the character and use of sources in news coverage of these speculative
episodes, which, this article argues, contributed significantly to public understanding of
the threat posed by Islamist terrorism.
To argue that an analysis of news source diversity provides insights into the way the
Blair government communicated the threat from terrorism and official sources shaped
news coverage, a discussion of source–media relations follows to provide a theoretical
context for the study.

Theoretical context: Exploring news sources

Studying news sources is important for understanding social power (Cottle, 2000,
cited in Carlson and Franklin, 2011), since sources given news access have an oppor-
tunity to set the news agenda, define the parameters of debate and shape ideology
(O’Neill and O’Connor, 2008). Research has shown that due to practical considera-
tions (Hallin et al., 1993), efficiency (Gans, 1979) and the cultural authority that they
afford to a news report (Davis, 2002; Herman and Chomsky, 1988) journalists often
defer to official sources when seeking stories or information. Sources granted access
to the media, therefore, tend to be from those institutions or organisations that tradi-
tionally wield power in society, the government, police and large corporations, for
example. These sources are then able to act as the ‘primary definers’ of news and
establish the boundaries of public discourse on issues and news events (Hall et al.,
1978). While this view has been challenged for ignoring the motivations of sources
(Schlesinger, 1990) and the definitional role of the media (Miller, 1993), it has pro-
vided a theoretical research agenda to explore the relationship between political and
media elites (Manning, 2001: 15–19, 199).
Although a number of studies of US journalism have documented an inherent bias
toward official sources when reporting the 9/11 attacks and the ‘War on Terror’ (Woods,
2007; Xigen and Izard, 2003), scant attention has been paid to sources and their use in
UK news reporting on terrorism. This is surprising given audiences’ increased awareness
of sourcing practices following the Gilligan/Kelly affair and subsequent Hutton Report,
but also when considering their relevance to discursive debates on media representations
of terrorism.
Which sources appeared in news coverage of terrorism and how they were used by
journalists are therefore important in determining how the news media represented terror-
ism. More specifically, we must consider whether official accounts of individual terrorist

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Matthews 299

events were sufficiently challenged and the extent to which journalists gave voice to alter-
native views and perspectives. Given the controversy that surrounded the Blair govern-
ment’s attempt to communicate the risk from terrorism, an over-representation of official
sources in news narratives of alleged plots would have presented a narrow interpretation
of these events (Ericson et al., 1989: 9; Mason, 2007: 111), reinforcing elite political dis-
course on terrorism.
Empirical research across a range of different case studies has shown that media
output is dominated by accounts from those in positions of power or authority (Miller
and Williams, 1996: 316, cited in Mason, 2007). Manoff and Schudson (1987) and
Sigal (1973) found that almost three quarters of sources in news stories were attrib-
uted to government or official institutions (Mason, 2007: 110). Kern (1979, cited in
Atwater and Green, 1988) examined source attribution in CBS and NBC News cover-
age of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, noting a tendency of correspondents to
quote the US President with little attention paid to the opinions and views of foreign
opponents. Altheide (1981, cited in Atwater and Green, 1988) analysed broadcast
news coverage of the Iranian hostage crisis, demonstrating that network journalists
relied on official sources and were biased towards sources that appeared western and
were able to speak English (Atwater and Green, 1988: 967). An earlier study, how-
ever, examining US nightly television news coverage of the TWA hijacking in June
1985 showed that unofficial sources appeared most often, with the networks person-
alising coverage through the accounts of relatives and friends of the hostages (Atwater
and Green, 1988).
The danger is that if journalists rely on official sources, they risk presenting an unbal-
anced account of a particular terrorist incident, which not only leads to a diminished
quality of journalism, but may also create disproportionate public anxiety about the risk
posed by terrorism. This is borne out by research which has found that source selection
in news coverage of the risk from terrorism can influence public concern, with ‘govern-
ment officials tending to describe the risk of terrorism in more ominous and weighty
terms than non-government officials’ (Woods, 2007: 15).
If, as has been suggested, information emanating from official sources was unreliable,
then to what extent did these sources define and shape coverage of alleged terrorist plots?
Were these accounts balanced by other sources and how prominent were alternative
sources? Moreover, how were sources identified by journalists and was there a tendency
to rely on unnamed sources when reporting these episodes? This article seeks to tackle
these issues and addresses three specific research questions:

RQ1: Did government sources act as the primary definer of alleged terrorist plots?
RQ2: To what extent did journalists make veiled or anonymous references to their
sources?
RQ3: What were the conventions of source use?
RQ3(a) Were official sources used to support or authenticate a threat by providing
information about an alleged plot?
RQ3(b) How were references to sources phrased? Did journalists use direct or indirect
quotes from the source and what insights can phrasing provide when determining how
sources were used in news reporting of alleged plots?

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300 Media, War & Conflict 6(3)

Method
The study focuses on the British press, an intensively competitive sector of the UK’s
media market and one that is largely unfettered from government regulation, examining
articles from national newspaper coverage of five alleged Islamist plots between January
2003 and January 2008: the Ricin Plot (January 2003); Old Trafford Bomb Plot (April
2004); Canary Wharf Bomb Plot (November 2004); Transatlantic Airliners Plot (August
2006); and the Soldier Kidnap Plot (January 2007). These five alleged plots were selected
as representative of the breadth of coverage during the period of analysis.
For each episode, articles were drawn from the first three days of press coverage,
beginning on the day the alleged plot was first reported in the newspapers. Commentary
and editorial pieces were excluded, with the study limited to examining source use in
fact-based news stories. Content was gathered through the NewsUK database’s search
facilities, with appropriate search terms used to identify articles from across 18 newspa-
per titles.1 This produced a total of 229 newspaper articles for analysis. Each individual
source attribution was used as the unit of analysis (N = 1028) and coded using the follow-
ing categories.

Source type
This variable noted each reference to a source which appeared in the text. References were
identified and classified according to a typology of 17 different source attributions.2

Identification of the source

Source identification used three separate coding variables. First, whether the attribution
was to an individual; second, if the source was identifiable in some way through refer-
ence to their job title, department or organisation; and finally, as defined by Culbertson
(1975), a veiled attribution to a non-specific source, a category which included all anony-
mous references. This article distinguishes veiled and identifiable attributions by the
degree of transparency of each reference and the accountability that it provides to a
particular individual, institution or organisation. This approach recognises that citing a
West Midlands Police source, for example is more precise than a vague attribution to
police sources. Significantly, it provides a level of accountability by allowing the com-
ments or information to be traced to a specific police force which has defined responsi-
bilities and obligations to the public.

Reference phrasing
The third coding category logged reference phrasing, whether each recorded reference
was a direct quote from a source, an indirect quote, where a piece of information was
attributed to a source but not quoted directly, or a narrative reference – a category
which included all other references to a source that a reader could construe as being
used to support, authenticate or corroborate a particular statement, viewpoint or piece
of information.

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Matthews 301

Reference use
The final category identified whether the reference to the source occurred when describ-
ing the plot or police operation or if it was used to support information relating to wider
narrative themes or background reporting to the story.
To assess intercoder reliability, 22 articles (10% of the sample) were randomly
selected, with the identified sources from those articles coded by two independent
researchers. Intercoder reliability for each variable was above the accepted 0.80 thresh-
old for similar studies of media content (Neuendorf, 2002).

Source diversity in press coverage of alleged plots

Overall, the findings indicate that elite sources were prominent in news reporting on
alleged Islamist plots, with three source types – police, government and security sources
– accounting for more than 40 per cent of all coded attributions (see Table 1). The promi-
nence of references to these major public institutions is expected if we consider both
their significance to the discourse of terrorism and the characteristics of news coverage
of alleged terrorist plots. The results show attribution to police sources as the primary
reference type, representing 20 per cent of all coded references from the sample. The
next most frequently cited reference type was government sources (12.2%). The findings
here, as structural theories of media access have claimed, evidence a tendency for jour-
nalists to turn to official sources of information when they report on suspected plots.
There is, however, also evidence that journalists drew on unofficial sources, with
references to members of the public (9.1%) and community sources (4.2%) prominent.
This, as argued further below, is a reflection of the two later episodes examined in this
study, the foiled transatlantic airliners and kidnap plots, where following police raids on
homes in areas with large Muslim populations, journalists gave voice to ordinary mem-
bers of the public disrupted by anti-terrorist raids.
Within the sample there were a total of 331 individual named sources or 32.5 per cent
of all coded references. Table 2 below shows the name and title of the top 13 most fre-
quently quoted sources. The results replicate those reported above for reference type,
with senior police officers prominent. All of the top six named sources in newspaper
coverage were from one of three reference types: police sources, government sources, or
US sources.

Conventions of source use

The results from this study show that while anonymous sources were prominent within
press coverage of alleged terrorist plots, the level of identification given to sources var-
ied by type.
The data show that for the most frequently cited source type – police sources – there
were a slightly greater proportion (52.4%) of veiled attributions than those identifiable to
the reader. References to political sources, conversely, were more often (51.4%) in the
form of identifiable rather than veiled attributions to a source (see Figure 1). The data also
show that the majority of references to government sources (79.2%) were attributions that

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302 Media, War & Conflict 6(3)

Table 1.  References grouped by type.

Reference type n %
Police sources 206 20.0
Government sources 125 12.2
Security sources 112 10.9
Members of the public 94 9.1
Political sources 72 7.0
Expert 69 6.7
US sources 61 5.9
Pakistani sources 54 5.3
Community sources 43 4.2
Anonymous 35 3.4
Counter terrorism sources 32 3.1
Plot-specific sources 29 2.8
Miscellaneous 28 2.7
Hybrids 26 2.5
Airline sources 16 1.6
Senior/authoritative sources 15 1.5
Health sources 11 1.1
Total 1028 100.0

Table 2.  Most frequently named sources.

Name and title n

John Reid, UK Home Secretary 30
Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister 20
David Shaw,  Assistant Constable of West Midlands Police 15
Michael Chertoff, US Homeland Security Chief 14
George Bush, US President 11
Dave Whatton, Greater Manchester Assistant Chief Constable 10
David Veness, Head of Metropolitan Police Anti terrorist branch 9
Paul Stephenson, Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner 9
Peter Clarke, Deputy Assistant Commissioner for the Metropolitan 9
Police
Lance Corporal Hashmi’s Brother Zeeshan 8
Dr Pat Troop, Deputy Chief Medical Officer 6
Shabir Hussain, Chairman of the Ludlow Road Mosque 6
Mohammed Naseem, Chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque 6

allowed the reader to identify the source by either naming an individual minister or refer-
ring to a specific government department. This finding, supported by the prominence of
government sources as individual named sources, suggests that senior ministers did go on
record to discuss the story or at the very least permitted journalists to provide some

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Matthews 303

Figure 1.  Stacked column graph showing proportion of veiled and identifiable references.

indication to their readers as to the institution or department from which this information
was sourced.
So while anonymous sourcing may be a significant characteristic of the UK news
discourse of terrorism, it would seem difficult to assume that government sources were
the key drivers of ‘the false narrative to terrorism’ (Oborne, 2006). References of this
type were found to be more often overt rather than veiled attributions to an institutional
source and, importantly, this would have enhanced the accountability and transparency
of information or evidence credited to the source.
The findings from this study also reveal a complex relationship between phrasing
and identification (see Table 3). First, despite the prevalence of anonymous or veiled
attributions the findings across the sample show that a greater proportion of refer-
ences (58.3%) were phrased as direct quotations from the source. Second, references
to government and political sources, both reference types that included a greater num-
ber of identifiable attributions, were also found to be more often in the form of direct
quotations from a source.
Although not wholly unexpected, since we know that journalists seek to enhance the
validity of their accounts by citing authoritative sources, the data show that references to
public officials were more often in the form of direct attribution to a named or identifi-
able source (see Figure 2). This does, however, suggest caution towards the view that
anonymous government sources were influential in shaping news coverage of alleged
Islamist plots, with government sources both identifiable to the reader and referenced
using a direct quote from the source.
References to security sources were more frequently found as indirect or narrative-
style phrasing (67.9%). This finding taken together with the prominence of references to

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304 Media, War & Conflict 6(3)

Table 3.  Reference phrasing: Reference type split by direct, indirect and narrative-style
attributions.

Reference type n Direct (%) Indirect (%) Narrative (%)

Police sources 206 100 (48.5) 33 (16) 73 (35.4)
Government sources 125 77 (61.6) 23 (18.4) 25 (20)
Security sources 112 36 (32.1) 28 (25) 48 (42.9)
Members of the public 94 85 (90.4) 4 (4.3) 5 (5.3)
Political sources 72 54 (75) 10 (13.9) 8 (11.1)
Expert 69 50 (72.5) 9 (13) 10 (14.5)
US sources 61 38 (62.3) 9 (14.8) 14 (23)
Pakistani sources 54 21 (38.9) 14 (25.9) 19 (35.2)
Community sources 43 40 (93) 3 (7) 0 (0)
Anonymous 35 15 (42.9) 10 (28.6) 10 (28.6)
Counter terrorism sources 32 16 (50) 7 (21.9) 9 (28.1)
Plot-specific sources 29 20 (85.7) 5 (4.8) 4 (9.4)
Miscellaneous 28 13 (46.4) 8 (28.6) 7 (25)
Hybrids 26 8 (30.8) 2 (7.7) 16 (61.5)
Airline sources 16 10 (62.5) 6 (37.5) 0 (0)
Senior/authoritative sources 15 7 (46.7) 2 (13.3) 6 (40)
Health sources 11 9 (81.8) 2 (18.2) 0 (0)
Total 1028 599 (58.3) 175 (17) 254 (24.7)

unspecified or unidentified ‘security sources’ seems to confound Culbertson’s (1975)

view that anonymity will be moderated through direct attribution to a source.
The data also show that 44.8 per cent of attributions to government sources and 38.9
per cent of references to political sources were authenticating or supporting information
relevant to the plot. This indicated that attributions to such source types were more often
used during supplementary or background reporting to a story. This contrasted with ref-
erences to the police (85%), security services (78.6%) and members of the public (66%),
which all had a significantly higher proportion of references classified as relevant to the
plot. Only 44.8 per cent of references to government sources, however, were coded as
‘relevant to the plot or specific threat’.
If government sources were not commenting on details of the plot, it also implies that
they were not the primary definers of the individual episodes analysed in this study.
While these sources did go on record, their comments were not linked to the alleged plots
but wider narrative themes, issues and debates associated with the threat from terrorism.
This is important given the aims of this study and the suggestion that during Blair’s pre-
miership, government sources were leaking information about specific plots in order to
amplify the risk from Islamist terrorism. Some may argue that these sources were still
prominent in shaping coverage but that their identity was masked by referencing anony-
mous or non-specific source types. The data, however, show quite the opposite.
References to government sources were more often identifiable to the reader and the
three non-specific source types, anonymous sources, senior/authoritative sources and
hybrids, only represented a tiny proportion of references across the sample. Furthermore,

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Matthews 305

Figure 2.  Stacked column graph showing reference use.

such an approach, while allowing journalists to maintain the anonymity of official or

government sources who were unwilling or unable to go on record (Stenvall, 2008),
would also seem to contradict the normative values of journalism, which emphasise the
importance of the full or partial identification of sources to provide audiences with a
means of assessing the veracity of a story or piece of information. Since journalistic
practice tends towards senior and authoritative sources as these enhance the credibility
of a news narrative (Boeyink, 1990), it would also seem unlikely that references without
some form of organisational or institutional affiliation would have been provided in the
narrative (Culbertson, 1975).

Further discussion and conclusion

The first three alleged plots included in this study were never substantiated as legitimate
threats. Five people were charged in connection with the Ricin plot in January 2003 but
all were subsequently acquitted of any serious terrorism offences. The Old Trafford
bomb plot and Canary Wharf plots of 2004 were both examples of the more sensational-
ist reporting that characterised the period of analysis. Ten people were arrested in con-
nection with a terrorist plot to target Old Trafford; however, all were eventually released

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306 Media, War & Conflict 6(3)

within a week of their arrest without charge. While there was no ‘official’ comment on
the plot, The Observer (2004) later carried an interview with Rebecca Yates, the solicitor
of one of the arrested suspects. In this article it was claimed that the link between the
suspects and a specific plot to target Old Trafford was tenuous, and had only emerged
following the discovery of a ticket stub at the home of one of the suspects. The Canary
Wharf plot, contrary to how it was presented in the UK tabloid press, was never substan-
tiated as a credible threat and no arrests were ever made in connection with the plot.
The two later episodes examined in this study, however, have both subsequently been
validated as credible threats, with criminal prosecutions relating to the plots described in
the original news reporting. Twelve people ‘were successfully prosecuted following the
arrests in relation’ to the plot to bring down transatlantic airliners. Of these, seven were
convicted of conspiracy to murder and are currently serving minimum prison sentences
of between 22 and 40 years (CPS, 2010: 1). Six men were convicted of offences relating
to the alleged terrorist plot to kidnap and kill a British Muslim soldier. Parviz Khan was
found guilty in February 2008 of ‘engaging in conduct with the intention to commit acts
of terrorism’, and ‘possession of a document likely to be useful to a person committing
or preparing an act of terrorism’, and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Four other
defendants were also convicted of involvement in the plot and are currently serving
prison terms of varying lengths (CPS, 2008).
This article does not dispute that some of these alleged plots, as they were reported,
were evidently real but attempted to document how these events were reported by the
news media. Specifically, the aim was to assess the claim that government officials were
the primary source definers of these events and, as such, representations of these threats
were unbalanced or distorted to serve narrow political goals.
The results from this study, however, provide little empirical evidence to support
the view that government sources were the primary definers of these events and that
these actors were driving a false narrative about alleged Islamist plots. The data here
show that, while official sources were important in shaping coverage, police sources
were the most prominent source across the five episodes. This reflected the central
narratives to these events, which were orientated around the nature of the threat, police
operations and criminal process. It indicates, therefore, a pragmatic approach to sourc-
ing, emphasising the synergy between story type and the professional imperative for
journalists to source information that is relevant to the story. Sources fulfil a need for
journalists and, consequently, as news of each plot emerged, journalists turned to
sources that were able to provide accurate and timely information. Since the episodes
analysed in this study included significant police involvement, with all but one of the
plots linked to anti-terrorist raids, it is simply a reflection of the narrative that police
sources occur most frequently in reports.
Overall, the picture provided by the data is of greater diversity in source use in UK
news reporting on Islamist plots than past studies have associated with media coverage
of terrorism (Woods, 2007). The results indicate that alternative sources and, in particu-
lar, ordinary members of the public played a significant role in news reporting of alleged
terrorist plots. This mirrors news media narratives to terrorism which evolved post 7/7,
where there was a shift away from a frame characterised by inevitability and prepared-
ness (Richards, 2007) towards one which emphasised community perspectives on

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Matthews 307

anti-terrorism operations and explored the impact of anti-terrorist raids and government
counter-terror policies on social cohesion. The implications of this were that accounts of
Islamist plots were balanced by other views and perspectives, with journalists often
choosing to present personal accounts of those affected by police operations alongside
official testimony.
Nonetheless, the results do also indicate that anonymous sources were a prominent
feature in news reporting on alleged terrorist plots. Most significant were what Culbertson
(1975) defined as ‘veiled attributions’, opaque references to an institution, rather than to
a named individual. References to government sources, however, did not follow this
trend. The empirical evidence from this analysis shows that, in press coverage of alleged
terrorist plots, journalists used more transparent and identifiable forms of referencing
when citing government sources. This is significant as it demonstrates that government
spokespersons more often went on record, casting some doubt on the view that these
narratives were driven by politically sanctioned leaks from sources within or close to the
Blair government (Morris, 2007; Oborne, 2006).
Instead of simply counting and coding source attributions, the study also assessed
reference use. A one-dimensional analysis of source type would simply suggest that offi-
cial sources, through references to police, government and security sources, were the
primary definers of alleged terrorist plots. By also examining reference use, however, the
data show that government sources were in fact more commonly cited by journalists
when discussing wider themes, context or background, rather than describing the arrests
or providing details about the plot. Unlike government sources, references to police or
security sources were more likely to be used to support key information pertaining to the
plot or police operation and served to validate a specific allegation or threat. So, while
government sources were important definers of these five episodes, they were not promi-
nent when news reports were elaborating on the nature and intended target of the threat.
This finding is important in two respects. First, it shows the limitations of relying on a
simple survey of reference type to document the primary source definers in news texts.
Second, it challenges the perception that news narratives about alleged Islamist plots
promoted a government agenda since there is little evidence that government sources
were active when it came to discussing operational issues associated with the episodes
examined in this study.
This study contributes to our understanding of the relationship between the media and
terrorism by demonstrating that individual journalists act independently and that terror-
ism-related coverage, whether of real or suspected threats, is not homogeneous. To argue
that the media were complicit in misrepresenting the threat posed by Islamist groups fails
to acknowledge the role the journalists play in source selection and interpretation. In this
study, therefore, while there was a bias towards official perspectives, examining nuances
in the conventions of source use challenges the view that the UK news media, by recy-
cling misinformation propagated by government sources, supported the political con-
struction of terrorism.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

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308 Media, War & Conflict 6(3)

Notes
1. The newspapers selected were: The Daily/Sunday Express; Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday; The
Daily/Sunday Mirror; The Daily/Sunday Telegraph; Financial Times; The Guardian/The
Observer; The Independent/Independent on Sunday; The Sun/News of the World; The Times/
Sunday Times; and The Sunday People.
2. Rules for classifying reference type:
Type Rules for Classification: (1) Government sources – reference to a named individual or
department from the government or their spokesperson or references to ‘government sources’
or ‘officials’ (includes attribution to No 10 and Downing Street); (2) Political sources –
reference to a named politician or his or her spokesperson or veiled references to Westminster
sources, civil servants or political parties; (3) Police sources – named individual, police
force, department or their spokesperson and veiled reference to the police, police officials,
detectives and officers; (4) Security sources – named security individual, official or agency
(includes attributions to the head of MI5, references to MI5 and veiled references to security
sources, official or chiefs); (5) Senior/authoritative sources – unnamed or anonymous sources
but reference suggests seniority or authority: top level sources, official sources, for example;
(6) Counter terrorism sources – references to counter terrorism, anti-terror or intelligence
sources; (7) Members of the public – person on the street (individual anonymous accounts
were not counted separately, instead each set of interviews were counted as one individual
reference unless their comments were punctuated by references to other sources); (8) Experts
– named and veiled reference to an expert/s, academic/s, analyst/s, scientist/s, writer, or think
tank; (9) Hybrids – reference to two or more reference types: examples include a police secu-
rity official or government security source; (10) Community sources – reference to either a
named or unnamed community leader, activist or local councillor; (11) Anonymous sources
– an unnamed or anonymous reference to a ‘source’: a well-placed source, a Daily Mail
source, for example; (12) Miscellaneous – reference to any other named or veiled source
(includes references to ‘Chief Executive’, ‘immigration sources’, quotes from website mes-
sage boards); (13) Airline sources – references to sources from the airline industry or to
airport authorities (included as a separate type due to the impact of one or more of the alleged
plots on air travel); (14) US sources – reference to a named US politician, official or expert
(also includes veiled references to US officials or spokespersons); (15) Pakistani sources
– reference to a named politician, official or expert from Pakistan (also includes veiled refer-
ences to Pakistani officials, sources and spokespersons – included as a separate source type
due to the number of references to ‘sources in Pakistan’ or similar in the sample); (16) Health
sources – references to health professionals and health authorities; (17) Plot-specific sources
– categories of sources relevant to each specific plot were also used: those categories with
less than 10 attributions were collated as plot-specific sources and included the following:
spokespersons from Manchester United Football Club; military sources; family or friends of
Lance Corporal Hashmi; family or friends of Ken Bigley; and French sources.

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Author biography
Jamie Matthews is Lecturer in Communication and Media at Bournemouth University. He holds an
MA in Contemporary War and Peace Studies from the University of Sussex and a PhD in Public
Communication from Bournemouth University. His research interests centre on media coverage of
conflict and crisis and its influence on the dynamics of public opinion, with a particular interest in
representation and discourses of terrorism and counter-terrorism policy.

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