Countering Terror: The Importance of a Free Press

Abstract:     
The paper is an attempt to reestablish the importance of a free press in the context of combating the most dreadful threat faced by countries in current times - terrorism. Considering the case of transnational terrorism, the robust analysis establishes that a free press does have a mitigating impact on terrorism. The importance of the paper extends further to substantiate that, though a democracy has often been criticized to be terror-inviting, when empowered by a free press, the two together have a strong terror dampening eect.

Keywords: Institutions, Press Freedom, Terrorism

JEL Classification: O10, O12

working papers series