Daniel Pipes cuts the through the media dhimmitude in persistently mis-identifying the Chechen terrorists. But he doesn't go quite far enough, at least until a passing mention in the last paragraph. They're not just terrorists; they're Islamic jihadists -- as I have shown here many times.
The press, however, generally shies away from the word terrorist, preferring euphemisms. Take the assault that led to the deaths of some 400 people, many of them children, in Beslan, Russia, on September 3. Journalists have delved deep into their thesauruses, finding at least twenty euphemisms for terrorists:Assailants - National Public Radio.
Attackers - the Economist.
Bombers - the Guardian.
Captors - the Associated Press.
Commandos - Agence France-Presse refers to the terrorists both as "membres du commando" and "commando."
Criminals - the Times (London).
Extremists - United Press International.
Fighters - the Washington Post.
Group - the Australian.
Guerrillas: in a New York Post editorial.
Gunmen - Reuters.
Hostage-takers - the Los Angeles Times.
Insurgents - in a New York Times headline.
Kidnappers - the Observer (London).
Militants - the Chicago Tribune.
Perpetrators - the New York Times.
Radicals - the BBC.
Rebels - in a Sydney Morning Herald headline.
Separatists - the Christian Science Monitor.
And my favorite:Activists - the Pakistan Times.
The origins of this unwillingness to name terrorists seems to lie in the Arab-Israeli conflict, prompted by an odd combination of sympathy in the press for the Palestinian Arabs and intimidation by them. The sympathy is well known; the intimidation less so. Reuters' Nidal al-Mughrabi made the latter explicit in advice for fellow reporters in Gaza to avoid trouble on the Web site www.newssafety.com, where one tip reads: "Never use the word terrorist or terrorism in describing Palestinian gunmen and militants; people consider them heroes of the conflict."
The reluctance to call terrorists by their rightful name can reach absurd lengths of inaccuracy and apologetics. For example, National Public Radio's Morning Edition announced on April 1, 2004, that "Israeli troops have arrested 12 men they say were wanted militants." But CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, pointed out the inaccuracy here and NPR issued an on-air correction on April 26: "Israeli military officials were quoted as saying they had arrested 12 men who were 'wanted militants.' But the actual phrase used by the Israeli military was 'wanted terrorists.'"
(At least NPR corrected itself. When the Los Angeles Times made the same error, writing that "Israel staged a series of raids in the West Bank that the army described as hunts for wanted Palestinian militants," its editors refused CAMERA's request for a correction on the grounds that its change in terminology did not occur in a direct quotation.)
Metro, a Dutch paper, ran a picture on May 3, 2004, of two gloved hands belonging to a person taking fingerprints off a dead terrorist. The caption read: "An Israeli police officer takes fingerprints of a dead Palestinian. He is one of the victims (slachtoffers) who fell in the Gaza strip yesterday." One of the victims!
Euphemistic usage then spread from the Arab-Israeli conflict to other theaters. As terrorism picked up in Saudi Arabia such press outlets as The Times (London) and the Associated Press began routinely using militants in reference to Saudi terrorists. Reuters uses it with reference to Kashmir and Algeria.
Thus has militants become the press's default term for terrorists....
Worse, the multiple euphemisms for terrorist obstruct a clear understanding of the violent threats confronting the civilized world. It is bad enough that only one of five articles discussing the Beslan atrocity mentions its Islamist origins; worse is the miasma of words that insulates the public from the evil of terrorism.
Seems to me that any news organization that cannot come to grips with such an obvious and crucial requirement as accurate reporting of events, should be suspect in all of it's reporting. I myself refuse to suscribe or support in any way these organizations. If enough people follow suit, then capitalism takes over, and either they wise up, or fade away. This is one of the reasons the internet has made such inroads into the print and broadcast media. There is no way for the intellectual elite to dominate this news forum.
I posted this on a list that I argue with liberals and got this response:
Mis-identifies? They weren't Kidnappers or Hostage takers? They weren't bombers, attackers, captors, and militants as well? All those are perfectly valid terms to describe them.
If we're going to go that far out of our way not to offend the terrorist we may as well just call them pedestrians. They walked into the building.
I agree Shadow, If people stop subscribing, they will smarten up. of course, that doesn't stop you from writing nasty letters to the editors, they all have online sites.
And, it drives me NUTS when they call these filthy animals anything else but what they really are, terrorists!
You wait there will be a new Politicaly Correct term that will be used for these vile creatures.
in the Daily Telegraph (Sydney Australia) they are referred to as "hostage takers", youd think that htye would run out of titles before they start to use the real terms.
But then again anything to deny the truth.
Someone look up the word "militant" in a dictionary, the description ain't one of child-butchering religious nuts.
"Terrorists" is more accurate. "Jihadists" would be even better. And by degrees one can then introduce the real problem: that terrorism is but one tactic in Jihad, a doctrine that does not fall into desuetude, and is not subject to change, and possesses many instruments by which that Jihad may be furthered, some of them having nothing to do with terrorism. Tariq Ramadan is more dangerous, in the end, than Bin Laden; the maternity wards in the French banlieues are as great threat to the continuance of French culture, of all that makes one want to learn French, as any bomb.
The problem, Hugh, with calling them "jihadists" is that to the jihadists and their apologists that is not a pejorative term. It actually confers a great degree of legitimacy -- that their activities are sanctioned by their faith.
Michael Ignatieff argues that a movement is a terrorist movement if the first avenue of redress they use is violence and thus he deems the PLO and the IRA terrorist movements. The IRA, unlike the PLO, however, apologized about a year ago for targeting civilians, and, so far as I am aware, have not done so since. Of course the PLO/PA, on the other hand,alternately denounces/supports violence depending on who the audience is.