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Media hype about the Westminster attack will only encourage others | Simon Jenkins

A union jack at half-mast in Westminster.
A union jack at half-mast in Westminster. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

On Wednesday afternoon a car went on to the pavement on Westminster bridge and killed three passersby. A man leapt out and stabbed a policeman. He was shot. No one knew who he was, only that he was dark-skinned and bearded. The police later released the names of those who tragically died in this dreadful incident. The possibly intended victims – members of parliament – were not harmed.

That is how we normally report the people who die by knifing in London each year, usually by those who are enraged or mentally deranged. Yet more are run down by cars. This is sad but not unusual. Some of those involved are Muslims. Of course it seems different when the attack is on an iconic site in central London, but that is merely how it seems.

Don’t fill pages of newspapers and hours of television and radio with words like fear, menace, horror, maniac, monster

What made Wednesday different was its instant subjection to an avalanche of supposition and speculation. This was a choice made by the media and political community, a choice to direct the view of a terrible incident entirely in one direction, even when nothing was known of its cause. Because it looked like a terrorist incident – albeit ham-fisted – and it was not initially known if it was a decoy, it was assumed to be such. Without a shred of evidence, and no “claimed responsibility”, the airwaves and press were flooded with assumptions that it was “Isis-inspired”. It was squeezed for every conceivable ounce of sensation and emotion.

Even if this was indeed a “terrorist” act and not that of a lone madman – I repeat, even if it was – the way to react is to treat it as a crime. Don’t speculate when you know such speculation will cause alarm. Don’t let Downing Street summon Cobra and drag the home secretary back from foreign parts. Don’t flood central London with hundreds of men with machine guns. Once the initial uncertainty is passed, don’t have the police issue interminable empty statements, as they stand in front of wall-to-wall BBC coverage of London “in total lockdown”.

Don’t fill pages of newspapers and hours of television and radio with words like fear, menace, horror, maniac, monster. Don’t let the mayor rush into print, screaming “don’t panic”. Don’t have the media trawl the world for pundits to speculate on “what Isis wants” and “how hard it is to protect ourselves from attack”. Don’t present London as a horror movie set. Don’t crave a home-grown Osama bin Laden. In other words, don’t pretend you are “carrying on as usual” when you are doing the precise opposite. When the prime minister stands up in parliament to announce, “We are not afraid,” the response is “why then is the entire government machine behaving as if it’s shit-scared?”

When Tony Blair in 2003 sought an easy headline by sending tanks to Heathrow to “counter terrorism”, it was estimated to have cost millions of pounds in instant tourist cancellations. Goodness knows the money and jobs lost by this week’s reckless coverage. Who knows what liberties the cabinet will eagerly curtail, or what million-pound contracts the security-industrial complex will squeeze from terrorised civil servants and ministers?

The actions of the authorities and the media in response to Wednesday have ramped up the hysteria of terror. This was ostensibly a random act by a lone player without access even to a gun. To over-publicise and exaggerate such crimes is to be an accomplice after the act. London’s response to the Westminster attack is an open invitation to every crazed malcontent to try it again.