- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
Terrorism is a loaded word, which people use about an outfit they disapprove of morally. It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn - who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.
We regularly point out that the British and other governments have condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation, but that’s their business. We also run interviews with guests and quote contributors who describe Hamas as terrorists.
The key point is that we don’t say it in our voice. Our business is to present our audiences with the facts, and let them make up their own minds.
As it happens, of course, many of the people who’ve attacked us for not using the word terrorist have seen our pictures, heard our audio or read our stories, and made up their minds on the basis of our reporting, so it’s not as though we’re hiding the truth in any way - far from it.
Any reasonable person would be appalled by the kind of thing we’ve seen. It’s perfectly reasonable to call the incidents that have occurred “atrocities”, because that’s exactly what they are.
No-one can possibly defend the murder of civilians, especially children and even babies - nor attacks on innocent, peace-loving people who are attending a music festival.
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I have always admired the BBC for this.
Almost all journalism outlets have similar policies.
Which leads conspiracy theory types to latch on and post things like “the CBC/BBC wont condemn hamas as terrorists! The mainstream media sucks!”, when in fact these policies have been in place fpr decades
Lots of MSM corps don’t have that same self-control tho.
Actually neither do politicians.
In my experience, most MSM does have that self-control in their journalism. However, it’s pretty common in MSM to spend a large proportion of their airtime and pages on opinions, where they do not have journalistic standards to uphold.
Both sides are religious fanatics. But people don’t like it when you state the truth about their side.
“My version of Winnie the Pooh has a bigger dick than yours!”
“I’ll kill you for believing that!”
sigh…
Religion is the excuse. Very rarely are conflicts actually driven by religious differences. Most of the time it’s just plain power-hungry people trying to gain power over another group, seize land, gain wealth, etc. Religion is great for galvanizing the masses, though.
I mean, terrorism does have a meaning, beyond just being something any government is going to call a rebellious armed group, what else are you supposed to call a group or individual whose actions are intentionally designed to provoke fear in order to further their goals, to distinguish them from a similar non-state armed group that doesn’t use that strategy?
Then Id like the ‘settelers’ who engage in terror campaigns using extrajudicial beatings and killings to also be called terrorists by the media, but that’s never going to happen so this is a fine compromise.
What does compromise have to do with truth? If someone is committing an act of terrorism they are a terrorist, regardless of how righteous or awful their cause. Regardless if it is government backed or rebel backed. It is the action and the intent that matters.
If a settler commits an act of terrorism they are a terrorist. If a Hamas person commits an act of terrorism they are a terrorist. If little old lady with a old tabby cat, 9 grandchildren, and spends her weekends helping at food bank commits an act of terrorism she is a terrorist.
Somebody’s going to get the sack for this
Do we need to call them a group inciting terror instead? Since people have formed an association that the terrorist’s cause must always be entirely wrong?
Is terror defined by the application or by the reaction? They could be called Terrorists, Militants, Freedom Fighters, Patriots, Defenders, Liberators, or a host of other things. I think one of the things that makes a news source reliable is - as written here - a telling of the facts. That lack of passion is a feature rather than a bug. It lets us hear the propagandists - all propagandists - for who they are by the inciteful rhetoric they use. A teller’s level of vitriol is generally inversely proportional to how much you can trust their account of what is happening.
There’s a difference in strategy though, to make something noteworthy and newsworthy though being shocking rather then tactically significant. Should we not talk about that?
Wouldn’t that just cover both sides of every war?
Ukraine is not committing acts of terror when defending themselves by killing Russian military invaders, so no it does not apply to every war.
Even Russians are trying to cover up their atrocities rather than highlighting them.
By the broadness of the definition presented, I would say that soldiers killing soldiers instills terror in soldiers, so therefore it would still cover them. But to be clear, I disagree with a definition so broad
Groups conducting acts with the purpose of extreme public terror then. Most countries don’t intentionally conduct phycological warfare on that scale.
