Sports, Terrorism and the Media

The Munich Hostage Crisis of 1972

Resumo

Taking the Munich Olympics of 1972 as a starting point, I will show in my article that the West German authorities were not prepared to respond to international terrorism in the early nineteen-seventies. Likewise, the organizing committee for the Olympics was more eager to erase the memory of the Nazi Games of 1936 than to prevent terrorist attacks during the Games. Only after the Munich hostage crisis the GSG 9, an anti-terror unit of the German border police, was founded - a unit that successfully ended the skyjacking of a Lufthansa airplane to Mogadishu in 1977. In addition I will argue that during the nineteen-seventies terrorist attacks in general became media events as defined by Danyel Dayan and Elihu Katz - meaning that they were not reported upon ex post but that from then on a terrorist event became an event in the moment of its appearance in audiovisual media. The terrorist assault on the Munich Olympics is an early example. However, while terrorists intended to arouse international attention in order to gain support for their cause, the international public reacted by clearly condemning any form of political violence.
Keywords Terrorism; Olympic Games