Why BBC doesn't call Hamas militants 'terrorists' - John Simpson
Why BBC doesn't call Hamas militants 'terrorists' - John Simpson
I guess not strictly news - but with all of the vitriol I have seen in discussions on the Israel situation, that have boiled down to arguments over wording, I feel that this take from the BBC is worthy of some discussion.
Mods, feel free to remove if this is not newsy enough.
Article: Why BBC doesn't call Hamas militants 'terrorists' - John Simpson
Government ministers, newspaper columnists, ordinary people - they're all asking why the BBC doesn't say the Hamas gunmen who carried out appalling atrocities in southern Israel are terrorists.
The answer goes right back to the BBC's founding principles.
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.
During the 50 years I've been reporting on events in the Middle East, I've seen for myself the aftermath of attacks like this one in Israel, and I've also seen the aftermath of Israeli bomb and artillery attacks on civilian targets in Lebanon and Gaza. The horror of things like that stay in your mind forever.
But this doesn't mean that we should start saying that the organisation whose supporters have carried them out is a terrorist organisation, because that would mean we were abandoning our duty to stay objective.
And it's always been like this in the BBC. During World War Two, BBC broadcasters were expressly told not to call the Nazis evil or wicked, even though we could and did call them "the enemy".
"Above all," said a BBC document about all this, "there must be no room for ranting". Our tone had to be calm and collected.
It was hard to keep that principle going when the IRA was bombing Britain and killing innocent civilians, but we did. There was huge pressure from the government of Margaret Thatcher on the BBC, and on individual reporters like me about this - especially after the Brighton bombing, where she just escaped death and so many other innocent people were killed and injured.
But we held the line. And we still do, to this day.
We don't take sides. We don't use loaded words like "evil" or "cowardly". We don't talk about "terrorists". And we're not the only ones to follow this line. Some of the world's most respected news organisations have exactly the same policy.
But the BBC gets particular attention, partly because we've got strong critics in politics and in the press, and partly because we're rightly held to an especially high standard. But part of keeping to that high standard is to be as objective as it's possible to be.
That's why people in Britain and right round the world, in huge numbers, watch, read and listen to what we say, every single day.
As is appropriate for journalism.
There's a reason every country that bitches about the BBC also gets accused of being far right authoritarians...
BBC calls them out, but pulls just short of saying it. And there's nothing far right authoritarians hate more than someone calmly telling the world exactly what they want. If we flat out called them nazis, they'd argue they're not technically nazis they're sparkling fascists.
Champugnent
The only people the BBC have ever called Nazis are the actual Nazis, because they called themselves Nazis. So fair enough.
I'm really sorry, but in case of Armenia, Artsakh and Azerbaijan BBC has been extremely pro-Azeri for many years, all the way to using Azeri place names which literally were invented 30 years ago when they were attempting (then unsuccessfully, now successfully) to depopulate those places.
Now they seem to have made a 180 degree turn (still using Azeri place names, though), but that can be explained by there no longer being Armenians in Artsakh, so lying is no longer that necessary.
Now, about nazis and Azerbaijan ... you comment seems asinine in that context.
Bullshit. They've used the word 'terrorist' for every other attack in the past two decades (9/11, London Bridge, Manchester Arena, 7/7, etc.). Was that not 'choosing sides' then?
They just can't admit that the UK fucked up and condemn Israel because the lawyers told them not to
Here is an article that doesn't refer to it as "terrorism":
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-40008389
The articles I have seen that refer to it as terrorism, tend to be from local BBC services, rather than the national one.
No its not, they are legally considered terrorists and are on the same list as ISIS or the Taliban.
Whose law?
The well known phrase is "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". I Imagine from their point of view, Israel is the 'terrorist' group, routinely bombing apartment buildings etc and that their actions are a proportionate counter (recent events nonwithstanding!)
Both sides of the current conflict have/are committing atrocities, but the reporting of those atrocities should be as factual and unbiased as possible.
Journalists should never label a group of people with an adjective. It's Journalism 101. Your writing should be free of personal bias and report the facts and quoted statements. No assumptions are allowed.
The U.S., U.K., E.U., and others designate them as a terrorist group but the U.N. does not. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_groups
The reality is that they’re the militant faction of the de facto government of a quasi-state under Israeli occupation. It is complicated so the BBC just says who thinks they’re a terrorist group. That seems reasonable for journalists striving to be neutral.
It's pretty ballsy to start using an alt with the same name as the last account you got banned under...
How long you think this one will last?
What list is this?
Read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare