This is something that pisses me off on a regular basis. Thank you Mr. Pipes for having the cojones to call a terrorist a terrorist.
Posted on 09/07/2004 3:05:06 AM PDT by kattracks
"I know it when I see it" was the famous response by a U.S. Supreme Court justice to the vexed problem of defining pornography. Terrorism may be no less difficult to define, but the wanton killing of schoolchildren, of mourners at a funeral, or workers at their desks in skyscrapers surely fits the know-it-when-I-see-it definition.
The media, however, generally shies away from the word terrorist, preferring euphemisms. Take the assault that led to the deaths of some 400 people, many of them children, in Beslan, Russia, on Sept. 3. Journalists have been deep into their thesauruses, finding at least twenty euphemisms for terrorists:
--Assailants - National Public Radio.
-- Attackers - the Economist.
-- Bombers - the Guardian.
-- Captors - the Associated Press.
-- Commandos - Agence France-Presse refers to the terrorists both as "membres du commando" and "commando."
-- Criminals - the Times (London).
-- Extremists - United Press International.
-- Fighters - the Washington Post.
-- Group - the Australian.
-- Guerrillas: in a New York Post editorial.
-- Gunmen - Reuters.
-- Hostage-takers - the Los Angeles Times.
-- Insurgents - in a New York Times headline.
-- Kidnappers - the Observer (London).
-- Militants - the Chicago Tribune.
-- Perpetrators - the New York Times.
-- Radicals - the BBC.
-- Rebels - in a Sydney Morning Herald headline.
-- Separatists - the Daily Telegraph.
And my favorite:
-- Activists - the Pakistan Times.
The origin of this unwillingness to name terrorists seems to lie in the Arab-Israeli conflict, prompted by an odd combination of media sympathy for the Palestinians and intimidation by them.
The sympathy is well known; the intimidation less so. Reuters' Nidal al-Mughrabi made the latter explicit in advice for fellow reporters in Gaza to avoid trouble, where one tip reads: "Never use the word terrorist or terrorism in describing Palestinian gunmen and militants; people consider them heroes of the conflict."
The reluctance to call terrorists by their rightful name can reach absurd lengths of inaccuracy and apologetics.
For example, National Public Radio's Morning Edition announced on April 1, 2004, that "Israeli troops have arrested 12 men they say were wanted militants." But CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, pointed out the inaccuracy here and NPR issued an on-air correction on April 26: "Israeli military officials were quoted as saying they had arrested 12 men who were 'wanted militants.' But the actual phrase used by the Israeli military was 'wanted terrorists.'"
(At least NPR corrected itself. When the Los Angeles Times made the same error in its April 24 issue, writing that "Israel staged a series of raids in the West Bank that the army described as hunts for wanted Palestinian militants," its editors refused CAMERA's request for a correction on the grounds that its change in terminology did not occur in a direct quotation.)
Metro, a Dutch paper, ran a picture on May 3, 2004, of two gloved hands belonging to a person taking fingerprints off a dead terrorist. The caption read: "An Israeli police officer takes fingerprints of a dead Palestinian. He is one of the victims (slachtoffers) who fell in the Gaza strip yesterday." One of the victims!
Euphemistic usage then spread from the Arab-Israeli conflict to other theaters. As terrorism picked up in Saudi Arabia such media as The Times (London) and the Associated Press began routinely using militants in reference to Saudi terrorists. Reuters uses it with reference to Kashmir and Algeria.
Thus has Militants become the media's default term for terrorists.
These self-imposed language limitations sometimes cause journalists to tie themselves into knots. In reporting the murder of one of its own cameraman, the BBC - which normally avoids the word terrorist - found itself using that term. In another instance, the search engine on the BBC website includes the word terrorist but the page linked to has had that word expurgated.
Politically-correct news organizations undermine their credibility with such subterfuges. How can one trust what one reads, hears, or sees when the self-evident fact of terrorism is being semi-denied?
Worse, the multiple euphemisms for terrorist obstruct a clear understanding of the violent threats confronting the civilized world.
It is bad enough that only one of five articles discussing the Beslan atrocity mentions its Islamist origins; worse is the miasma of words that insulates the public from the evil of terrorism.
(Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Militant Islam Reaches America. He has a Ph.D. in early Islamic history from Harvard and taught at Harvard and the University of Chicago.)
Copyright 2004, Daniel Pipes
complicity
C'mon, everybody knows the only terrorists in the world are Jews, Catholics, and Evangelical Christains.
(sarcasm off)
They are terrorists if they attack anyone in the news. Otherwise, they are militants.
"Journalists have been deep into their thesauruses"
Lol. Good line
U will run out of pigskin if you do that & lots of people through out the world rely on pigs for a variety of reasons & besides what did those poor animals do to deserve being used as adornment for the followers of the religion of peace.
Agreed. It is very common to hear the word "terrorist" in reference to Israel and America.
You have to give credit to the Arabs, they certainly know how to used the PC useful idiots of the West.
Amazing, isn't it?
Yes, that's for sure. Except far too many people accept it as truth - it's just easier. I heard 4 or 5 of these euphemisms for Terrorist these and am still livid. I've been 'correcting' non-freepers all week.
Activists? That's a new one on me. The media is working overtime on this one, at the expense of the hundreds of young, defenseless victims. Such as the CBS 'reporter' who was editorializing anti-Russian crap right on the scene of the makeshift morgue at night after the conflict had ended (how courageous), very near to where the parents were searching the dead to see if their loved ones were among them. Revolting.
This is something that pisses me off on a regular basis. Thank you Mr. Pipes for having the cojones to call a terrorist a terrorist.
Militants, guerillas, captors....Newsday.
Even the term "terrorist" is an inaccuracy. Call them by their true time. Muslims. All else is evasion; as such, it is that worst of lies, a lie to oneself.
The Old Media not only refuses to use the word "terrorist", but even more so avoids using the terms "Islamic" or "Muslim" . . . they will, on occassion, mention something about religious extremism, but they cannot single out muslims, because it messes with their false world view of all religions being morally equivalent . . . but make no mistake, just like on 9/11, the terrorists in Russia were Islamic . . .
And Stalin was an agrarian reformer, John Gotti was a simple businessman, Shiro Ishii was a medical researcher.
bttttttttt
Ping.
Yeah - the liberal media is big on names that don't quite meet the true definition; just like how they refer to the unborn baby as a fetus or tissue or embryo. Never baby. It's only a baby when someone WANTS it.
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