How truthful are news reports on Al-Qaeda?

How truthful are news reports on Al-Qaeda?

Jason Burke (Author) gives expert video advice on: What is Al-Qaeda?; What does Al-Qaeda want?; When was Al-Qaeda formed? and more...

News reports on Al-Qaeda vary in how accurate they are. Some are extremely good, some are extremely bad - sensationalizing Al-Qaeda, playing on the fear and the consequent interest that Al-Qaeda can provoke. One problem for journalists, and as a working journalist I'm very much aware of this, is a great lack of resources and of sources. So if you don't have newspapers who are prepared to send reporters out on the ground for long periods of time to learn about the subject, to get behind the subject, to put the subject in its context, you won't get a very good interpretation of what Al-Qaeda is. Similarly, there are fewer and fewer people who can and will speak about these subjects from either side, and that means that there's a greater reliance on government sources of information, which necessarily need to be tweaked to within a certain degree of circumspection.