Have today's terrorists taken over our TV set?

The desperate pleas of hostage Ken Bigley in an appeal staged and broadcast by his barbaric captors tore at our hearts.

The coverage of his ordeal has been incredible.

We have been glued to television news broadcasts, anxious for information, sadly resigned to what the conclusion has always seemed likely to be, although Palestine leader Yassir Arafat yesterday offered a glimmer of hope.

This one blindfolded man's plight has consumed the nation, which begs the question of whether we have all in fact become hostages to the terrorists.

Three years ago, the 9/11 atrocities saw everyone transfixed by the same horrific images and inconceivable commentary and to an extent that's happening again now.

Ok, America is probably not that interested in the fate of Bigley in the same way we were not that interested in the two Americans Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, captured with the Briton and executed last week.

But savage as these hostage-takers are, they are also sophisticated tacticians.

As primitive as their actions are, they employ modern technology to publicise their cause to the world.

Osama Bin Laden may have lived in a cave, but he used 21st century technology to bring Armageddon to New York and has used video releases and the power of the media to get messages across since.

Taking people from different countries hostage ensures the terrorists' message, their plea, reaches a naturally abhorred, but nevertheless global, audience.

Bigley's life has hung in the balance since he and his tragic American colleagues were captured at gunpoint in Baghdad on Thursday September 16.

There were fears he would have been executed earlier this week ahead of Blair's speech at the Labour Party Conference to embarrass the PM and rack up maximum propaganda points.

The past week has been portentous for the premier.

Try as he might to concentrate on domestic issues, Iraq simply will not go away.

The video of Bigley begging for his life placed the responsibility for saving the family man, and therefore possibly the blame for his death, squarely on Blair's shoulders.

It is exactly where the calculating captors, Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his terror gang, want it.

The 62-year-old civil engineer's appeal to the PM highlighted the government's powerlessness.

Sobbing, he said: "I need you to help me now, Mr Blair, because you are the only person on God's Earth who can help. I don't want to die.

"I need you to be as compassionate as you have always said you are and help me, help me to live so I can see my wife and my son and my mother and my brothers again."

Our hearts go out to his family; his wife who this weekend told how she cried and begged Bigley not to go to Iraq, his 86-year-old mother who has twice collapsed and been taken to hospital since her worst nightmare began.

Ken's brother Paul has labelled Blair's silence "the kiss of death".

Ministers have reiterated over and over that if they gave way to demands in these circumstances, they would be condemning many more Britons abroad to similar ordeals.

Yet as much sense as that makes, this issue, that plea, is all too emotive and it is difficult for Blair to not appear cold for not backing down.

These terrorists know how to use the media.

Their timing is purposeful; their ability to inflict political damage honed.

It is the media's job to report on what is happening in the world, inform Joe Public of atrocities we would otherwise be blind to.

But are we, with every story we publish and every package we film, unwittingly playing the terrorists' game?

We talk about Tony Blair and spin.

It is perhaps the terrorists who are kings of spin.

Jordan's King Abdullah this week called for an end to what he called the "free publicity" militant groups got from the media.

"Allowing the terrorists unlimited access to the newspapers and television increases their strength.

"I don't think it's possible to eradicate all the groups who kidnap people, but if the international community, all together, decided not to allow the media to be used to make propaganda, by showing images with the humiliation of hostages, one part of the problem could be resolved."

Professor of public communication at the Centre for Public Communication Research at Bournemouth University Barry Richards said there is no doubt the media is part of the problem.

"At the same time there is no way that the media as a whole, even in one country, could sign up to some sort of embargo on a whole tranche of news about terrorists. It is just not possible to keep things out of the news," he said.

The issue instead becomes how the media handles an incident.

Terrorism is a product of the mass media age, he added.

Terrorists need ways to disseminate their slogans and images to the world.

The aim through influencing public opinion is to mount pressure on governments, possibly cause change in government behaviour.

"Following the Madrid bombing, the election result was decisively influenced by the timing and nature of the terrorist attack. That is a very alarming and threatening prospect," he said.