July 12, 2005
Wordplay
The BBC is apparently indulging in a little semantic revisionism:
The BBC has re-edited some of its coverage of the London Underground and bus bombings to avoid labelling the perpetrators as “terrorists”, it was disclosed yesterday.
Early reporting of the attacks on the BBC’s website spoke of terrorists but the same coverage was changed to describe the attackers simply as “bombers”.
The BBC’s guidelines state that its credibility is undermined by the “careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments”.
Consequently, “the word ‘terrorist’ itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding” and its use should be “avoided”, the guidelines say.
There seem to be two problems here. First, it’s kinda hard to distinguish the “emotional or value judgment” of the word “terrorist” from that of the word “bomber.” Each invokes a similar emotional response, and as a fundamental judgment of character, they are pretty much identically negative.
Second, a bomber invariably is a terrorist—that’s the whole point of being a bomber. Anyone who plants a bomb on a crowded subway train or bus is behaving both as a bomber and a terrorist. That isn’t a “barrier to understanding;” it’s a simple fact.
This is the kind of thing that gets the folks at Broadcasting House a bad name.
Like “state censor.”
Posted by Stephen at 12:39 AM in Media | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
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