i dont know if anyone has said this but CNN arent calling Bin Laden a terrorist & they are calling the WTC terrorists ‘hijackers’ because CNN have connections all over the Middle East and make heaps of money out of the middle east.
Also when George Bush Sn and Saddam Hussain were in the news a while ago, Saddam made all the camera crews leave except CNN.
To repeat the correction, since it doesn’t seem to have stuck:
CNN says it always has used the term “terrorist” and will continue to do so.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/30/terrorist/index.html
It’s Reuters who has adopted the “suspected terrorist” rule.
The policy strikes me as a sensible precaution. As a general rule, the British media refer to somebody as a “suspected” terrorist/murderer/rapist/shoplifter until they have been convicted by a court of the alleged offence. In some cases, the fact that a newspaper report has been seen as assuming a defendant’s guilt has been enough to result in a mistrial or even in the dismissal of a case.
Numerous individuals have already been named as being involved in the attacks. It is likely that many others will be arrested in the US, Europe and elsewhere over the next few weeks or months. Referring to these people as “suspected hijackers” or “suspected conspirators” strikes me as a sensible precaution to avoid prejudicing any future trials. Bear in mind that we do not yet know where these people will be tried and that the rules governing what is and is not prejudicial to a trial vary from one country to another. Even if the hijackers themselves are dead, as Wumpus pointed out, some of the prosecution cases will rely on the defendants’ association with the hijackers. They will therefore need to show that the people who are alleged to have carried out the attacks did indeed do so. Remember that some people who had nothing to do with the attacks were identified as hijackers in the early days because some of the actual hijackers were using stolen passports.
One reason for avoiding the term “terrorist” is that it is not a criminal offence per se in many jurisdictions. They would have to be charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to cause an explosion or some other, more specific act related to the attacks.
That said, I can’t see any serious objection to referring to the attacks themselves as “terrorist attacks”.