Posted on 10/31/2023 6:17:50 AM PDT by george76
Below is my column in the New York Post on the Associated Press guideline for reporters to avoid calling Hamas a terrorist organization. Voice of America and other media outlets have made the same decision. This is not about supporting the Palestinian cause. It is about correctly describing a group that commits terrorist attacks as a terrorist organization.
Here is the column:
Confucius once said that “the beginning of wisdom is the ability to call things by their right names.”
That does not appear to be the approach of the Associated Press this week after the media organization told its reporters not to call Hamas fighters “terrorists” after they massacred civilians, raped women, and took a couple hundred hostages from Israel on Oct. 7.
The Voice of America issued its own instruction to avoid calling Hamas “terrorists.”
According to the AP, these fighters are to be called “militants” because the term “terrorist” has “become politicized.”
But there is nothing “politicized” in recognizing that Hamas intentionally targeted civilians, including mowing down unarmed participants at a peace concert.
They burned civilians alive in their homes and raped women.
They intentionally and systemically took civilian hostages, including children and the elderly.
The acts defined the actors. These were terrorist acts and those who committed them were by definition terrorists.
The International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism defines terrorism as “any … act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.”
The United Nations Security Council specifically includes with this definition “criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages.”
Nevertheless, the Associated Press reportedly issued an “Israel-Hamas Topical Guide,” which noted that “terrorism and terrorist have become politicized, and often are applied inconsistently.” Thus “the AP is not using the terms for specific actions or groups, other than in direct quotations.”
This isn’t the first time the AP has made strikingly artificial language choices.
For example, AP reporters were told to avoid using the word “surge” to describe the record number of migrants crossing the border.
Likewise, when there was violence and looting in various cities after the George Floyd killing, AP told its reporters to use “milder terms” like “unrest” rather than “riots.”
Yet when it came to January 6, AP routinely referred to the riot as an “insurrection” (here, here, here).
Notably, in one article titled “Riot? Insurrection? Words Matter in Describing the Capitol Siege,” the AP noted that other mainstream media were using “riot” but also raised the possible terms “sedition” and “coup attempt.”
For the record, I criticized President Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 speech while he was still giving it and wrote that his theory on the election and the certification challenge was unfounded.
I denounced the riot as a desecration of our constitutional process. However, it was not an insurrection, in my view. It was a protest that became a riot.
AP and some other outlets do not want to call it a riot not because it isn’t accurate, but because it is not sufficiently vilifying.
Conversely, the media are often eager to avoid “riot” as too judgmental.
Reporters actually told a chief of police not to use the word “riot” in reference to violence by protesters against police.
Similarly, as billions in property damages were occurring in various cities, Craig Melvin, an MSNBC host and co-anchor of “Today,” tweeted a “guide” that the images “on the ground” were not to be described as rioting but rather “protests.”
He noted, “This will guide our reporting in MN. While the situation on the ground in Minneapolis is fluid, and there has been violence, it is most accurate at this time to describe what is happening there as ‘protests’ — not riots.”
Polls have shown that most of the public view January 6 as a riot.
A CBS poll showed that 76% viewed it for what it was, a “protest gone too far.” The view that it was an actual “insurrection” was far less settled, with almost half rejecting the claim, a division breaking along partisan lines.
Obviously, people can disagree, but this would seem an obvious example where the AP would refrain from using the most loaded term of “insurrection” given the legal and factual contradictions in such usage.
The concern is that AP is showing bias in the use of such terms. Journalism schools now teach young reporters to follow an advocacy model in “leaving neutrality behind.”
Likewise, Stanford journalism professor Ted Glasser insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.”
Recently, former executive editor for the Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward released their survey of leading journalists and outlets and also concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful.
Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”
Downie explained that news organizations now “believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading ‘bothsidesism’ in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects.
“And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”
That view was echoed by Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press, who declared, “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.”
The response of the public has been consistent and clear: Trust in the media is at an all-time low.
Roughly 40% of the public has zero trust in the media. Likewise, 50% of Americans believe that the media lie to them to advance their own agendas.
Much of that distrust has occurred over what were viewed as false descriptions.
The best example was the “Let’s Go Brandon” incident.
In that case, NBC reporter Kelli Stavast was doing an interview with race car driver Brandon Brown after he won his first NASCAR Xfinity Series race.
During the interview, Stavast’s questions were drowned out by loud-and-clear chants of “F—k Joe Biden.” Stavast quickly declared, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’ ”
“Let’s Go Brandon” has become a type of Yankee Doodling of the media by the public. It reflected an exasperation with framing and revisionism by the media in describing events.
There is no greater disconnect than describing an attack killing hundreds of unarmed civilians and taking hundreds of hostages as the acts of “militants.”
There is wisdom that comes from calling things by the right name. This was terrorism.
But Turley still votes Democrat ...
Hamas, in reference to the GAZA Strip is NOT a terrorist organization.
IT’S A DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED GOVERNMENT. People there VOTED for this. People in GAZA support this. Just like people in Germany supported Hitler, and people in Japan supported the Emperor. There is NO separation between the will of the people in GAZA and it’s government representation.
The sooner people understand this reality the faster everyone can move on. There is no doubt in my mind that this ‘conflict’ can only end in Genocide, one way or the other, it’s now inevitable.
True dat.
BTTT
It is both a terrorist organization and a democratically elected government.
Anyone who helped put them in power, even by voting for them, is a supporter of a terrorist regime and should be treated as a terrorist themselves.
All those terrible scenes depicted by Orwell where language manipulation is the tool of thought control and totalitarianism seemed so outrageously unlikely back in the 1960s and 70s.
Hamas is a Terrorist Organization!
Anyone supporting Hamas is therefore giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Therefore protesting in favor of Hamas is NOT considered a form of free speech. The first amendment has limits the same as the 2nd amendment has limits ( age, type of weapon and criminal background) does.
When speech calls for harm to a President or other public official, when speech in a crowded theatre causes a panic, these are two examples when speech is not free.
The protest we see now should be stopped by the LEO’s in charge the same as the protest over Saint Floyd should not have been tolerated yet the same answer is thrown out for us to believe “ It’s free speech”.
Stop the nonsense and put these people in jail and kick them out of college.
Oh, that’s such a nice sounding quote. But the right name for Confucius is “Liar”.
God’s word of truth says “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Ps 111:10, Pr 9:10)
Confucius died 479 BC.
So, stop your virtue signaling and grow up. He had interesting and true things to say just as the pre-Christian western philosophers do.
Look Pete, Stalin was a devil. So was Hitler. So is Hamas. Just because they are government doesn’t make them any better.
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