CNN, Reuters and CBS have just announced they will not label Osama bin Laden a “terrorist,” with officials at CBS declaring “we are not a jury.” Here is a related excerpt:
"CNN Joins Reuters In Refusing To Refer To WTC, Pentagon ‘Terrorists’ As ‘Terrorists’… CNN spokesperson says network’s policy is to ‘identify people by their actions.’ Thus, those who flew the planes into the Trade towers and the Pentagon would be ‘alleged hijackers,’ not terrorists, because ‘CNN cannot convict anybody. Nothing has been judged by a court of law’…
Apparently, the leadership of these organizations have rejected usage of the label “terrorist” because it is a value judgment and news coverage should instead be objective and value-neutral. In a recent interview with Terri Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” a senior editor at Reuters went so far as to say that describing as “terrorism” the attack on the WTC "only serves to further cheapen the term ‘terrorism.’ " He said that Reuters will from now on describe the act as an “attack” and that the term “terrorism” should be stricken from news reportage. He added that this policy has been controversial within Reuters and said that it also is guided by the desire to protect their reporters from Islamic radicals who may think they are taking sides.
This twisted logic, IMHO, is utter bullshit. I encourage your responses.
Well,considering he is already indicted for the embassy bombings and has called for terrorist activities in and on U.S. Forces and people, I think its a load of bullsh*t
I’m all for value neutral reporting and objectiveness in the media but this is pure bullshit.
What is UbL going to do? Sue the news agencies for defamation of character? I say let him…he’s welcome to come to the US and file whatever he pleases with the court.
Calling the hijackers “alleged” hijackers because they haven’t been convicted is pretty silly, even from the anal-retentive/lawsuit-averse point of view of a news service stylebook writer. The hijackers are dead. They will never be tried in a court of law. Will CNN still refer to them as “alleged hijackers” 20 years from now? (Heck, Hitler was never tried in a court of law either. Does that make him an “alleged genocidal maniac?”)
If what happened to the WTC wasn’t terrorism, I don’t know what the term means. Calling it an “attack” is needlessly vague–next thing you know, they’ll be calling it an “incident.” Perhaps a news service does have a duty to be objective, but it has an even stronger duty to be clear and descriptive.
Well, the president and the rest of the powers that be are considering the actions of 9/11/01 to be acts of war. If it is truly a war, than what happened would be an attack and not a terrorist action. Perhaps ObL should be referred to as a warlord.
I am also curious as to how the application of the term “terrorism” to the events of 9/11 cheapen the term.
I heard the Reuters spokesman on “Fresh Air,” and I’m sure you can find their policy at their website. That said, I was wrong about CBS and cannot find an official declaration from CNN. I receive information about CNN from a friend who got his information–I just found out–from, um, Matt Drudge’s website. Let’s see if something more credible can be found. The CBS mistake is mine–I simply misread his e-mail. Sorry for any confusion, but Reuters IS standing by its refusal to characterize the WTC incident as “terrorism.”
Apparently, this trend toward value-neutrality is becoming more widespread, according to the Reuters’ spokesman.
I wondered that myself. Unfortunately, Terri Gross failed to follow up on it. When the Reuters editor made these comments, he was rather flustered, blurted out the “cheapens” remark and then quickly moved on.
To paraphrase, he added this: “The [WTC] act speaks for itself. There’s no need for us to add unnecessary descriptors such as the term ‘terrorism.’ Our job is to provide the news without editorializing.”
So how do they justify EVER using the word ‘terrorist’? If you can’t apply it to Bin Laden, who can you apply it to? Does that mean that they are engaging in editorialism any time they refer to anyone on the planet as a terrorist?
At a time when we are going to need as much resolve as possible, why are these organizations trying to soften the tone of discourse and whitewash what this monster does?
As for this nonsense:
I don’t suppose it has occured to this rocket scientist that removing the word ‘terrorist’ from their vocabulary NOW is editorializing? The word has been in use for a long time, to describe people who behave exactly as Bin Laden does. If the word has become semantically ‘loaded’, it is because WE have decided that people who do such things are evil. By eliminating the word, you help to eliminate the collective value judgement associated with it.
I can understand saying “suspected terrorist” or “alleged terrorist” instead of “terrorist”, but the events of September 11th were intended to inspire terror among American people and thus certainly constitute terrorism. In fact, I would say that calling this an “act of war” is less correct, since no-one (as far as I know) has taken responsibility for this attack yet. How can an anonymous attack on a large group of random people (of over sixty dfferent nationalities) be considered an act of war, and not terrorism?
If one nation attacks another it is an act of war even if the identity of the attacking nation is not at first known. The question is, what if a non-nation state or group attacks a nation state? Is that an act of war? I think it can be, especially if that group is backed by another group acting as a nation state.
(Forgive my legalise… “Group acting as a nation-state” translates to the Taliban. They are not widely recognized as a nation state but for all purposes act as a nation.)
Not at first known, yes, but it has to eventually be known, doesn’t it? If no-one takes credit for the attack, then the attacked nation doesn’t really know who its enemy is. In this case, for example, America might find it hard to justify bombing Afghanistan. That’s the predicament in which such an act deliberately puts the victim.
Yes, I would say I agree with you on this point. A “war” does not seem to be (or no longer seems to be) restricted to being between two nations.
While the decision of various news agencies t avoid using the word “terrorist” to describe the heinous crimes which occurred on September 11th strikes me as a bit preening or obsessive, it does have logic to support it.
Please note that none of these organizations are saying that bin Laden is not a terrorist. They are merely saying that, in trying to make an objective report of what has happened, they will not include their assertion that they believe he is a terrorist.
The term “terrorist” is not really amenable to precise definition. Rather it is a bit like “obscenity”; you know it when you see it. While any rational person in touch with the mores of mainstream culture in the western world can readily see that what occurred is a terrorist act in our collective view, the fact remains that there are people in the world who don’t think it was; one man’s “terrorist” is another (arguably pretty warped) man’s “freedom fighter”. The Palestinians were shown dancing in the street on September 11th were celebrating the fact that horrible murders were committed; they thought they were celebrating that some kind of blow for justice had been struck.
And for a news agency to refer to the attacks as terrorism is to state that our view is right and theirs is wrong, a most defensible position on an editorial page, but not a matter of objective news reporting.
In much the same way, reporters do not refer to “Al Gore who was really elected president”, even if they feel convinced of that, and no American newspaper would refer to the Democrats or the Republicans as “our party” in a news story, no matter how strong their allegiance on the editorial page. Even when we were fighting the Nazis in World War II papers did not refer to “the forces of evil” when reporting war news.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind at all if Reuters and the rest went back to using the term “terrorist”, but it would diminish their claim of being dedicated to coldly objective news reporting. And it is important that they people able to uphold that claim.
That Western news sources strive to maintain such objectivity is one of their greatest strengths. It has been reported that even members of the Taliban rely on The Voice of America to find out what is really going on in their country. Why? Because the VOA–like Reuters–reports the good and the bad about various nations and governments objectively, while the news sources in Afghanistan only broadcast propaganda, making no distinction between news stories and editorials.
That is a ridiculous argument. ‘Terrorist’ is no more obscure and broad-ranging than is ‘Murderer’, or ‘Rapist’, or any other word denoting an evil act that can take many forms.
And yes, perhaps on the fringes there can be a debate over whether a specific act is a terrorist act, but that doesn’t invalidate the word, that just means it is poorly applied in a specific case. That’s like saying that we’ll no longer use the word ‘Murderer’ because some people are called murderers who in fact aren’t.
And if there was any attack ever perpetrated that met the definition of ‘terrorist’, then the WTC attack was it. There is simply no ambiguity here.
Reuters is doing this for another reason, which they stated - they are removing the word in order not to antagonize the terrorists themselves, because they feel that to do so would put their field reporters at risk.
Hey, it’s a risky job. But the minute you start slanting your news to appease those who might take offense, you lose all claim to journalistic integrity. Reuters should be ashamed, and people should stop reading their news.
I’m not talking about dictionary definitions here, but I personally see a difference between the events of September 11th and, let’s say, the ongoing trouble in Palestine or in Kashmir. An event which is carried out by an identified organisation, on occupied land which is considered disputed territory, in order to free citizens of that land from what is considered an oppressive ruling power, is not really on the same level as this anonymous attack on a group of random people of many nationalities. I can see how the former can be considered a case of “freedom fighters” by the people on one side, although I won’t argue with anyone on the other side who might want to categorise it as terrorism, but really, how could anyone consider the suicide pilots of September 11th to be “freedom fighters”?? Were they trying to free their oppressed brothers in Brooklyn from the evil businessmen in the World Trade Centre?
People who celebrated the attack did it because they felt that “America had it coming”. It was ridiculous of them to do it if only for the fact that over fifty different nationalities were involved as well. Many of these people would not even deny that the event was an act of terrorism. If they have a problem with American presence in the Middle East, they can attack American strongholds in the Middle East. If they have a problem with Israel they can attack Israeli settlements. But they can’t come over to America and start randomly killing people on the streets saying, “Hi, we’re freedom fighters!”
Except that “murder” and “rape” have very specific legal definitions. “Terrorism” is much more squishy. I certainly wouldn’t mind if the news organizations in question label 9/11, but I also don’t mind if they don’t do so, as long as they objectively and thoroughly report the facts of the story.