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For decades, terrorist groups have used dramatic incidents of murder – blowing up hundreds or beheading a few – as a means of furthering their aims. They still do, because terror-murder always garners lots of media attention. But terror masters have learned it is not only important their organizations garner media attention, but the coverage make them appear viable, politically legitimate, perhaps even clean.

Experts point, as an example, to Hezbollah, a huge, Lebanon-based, international terrorist organization with a military wing (essentially a terrorist army) that surpasses that of al-Qaida, Hamas, and others in terms of its ability to field raw combat power. Aside from its men and arms, Hezbollah not only holds seats in the Lebanese parliament and has a heavy hand in Lebanese commerce, but is into the telecommunications industry and operates one of the most influential networks of terrorist-owned media in the world.

In Lebanon alone, Hezbollah owns or controls newspapers (the largest, Al Akhbar), television companies (the largest, Al Manar, broadcast internationally), radio stations, and untold numbers of websites and blogs, which are operated independently. And Hezbollah has cells "working" the media worldwide.

According to Middle East terrorism expert Dr. Walid Phares, the American public was deceived by a false sense of isolation from the growing threat of Middle Eastern terrorism during the 1980's. The situation worsened in the 1990's "when the diplomatic and academic elite in the U.S. began falsely describing Hezbollah as nothing more than a political party," Phares says, "In recent years, oil-financed Iranian propaganda has been trying to perpetuate this myth throughout the Western media."

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Phares adds, "America is not nearly as na?ve in terms of terrorism awareness as it was prior to 9/11," but Hezbollah's media and propaganda machine has since developed to a level of highly financed sophistication that it is simply unrecognizable as propaganda to many in the West.

Making matters worse, the Iranian petrodollars Phares speaks of – responsible for building Hezbollah's army and perpetuating the Hezbollah myth – have increased over the years from an average of $100 million each year, to a whopping $400 million to $1 billion annually.

But it's not only the specific print and broadcast media Hezbollah owns and operates in Lebanon, nor its cells operating internationally: Hezbollah influences and controls much of Lebanon's previously non-Hezbollah, formerly objective media as Hezbollah's operators and agents have infiltrated newsrooms, and essentially bought editorial desks as well as Western correspondents based in that country.

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