12-14-2008, 09:27 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>'The BBC cannot see the difference between a criminal and a terrorist'</b>
Sheela Bhatt in Mumbai | December 14, 2008 | 18:10 IST
The British Broadcasting Corporation, a state-sponsored but independently run, media organization has attracted sharp criticism for having "double-standards" in its coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks. Most times the BBC reporters referred to the terrorists who attacked Mumbai as "gunmen" or "militants".
Well-known thinker and editor-in-chief of Covert magazine, MJ Akbar has taken up the issue seriously. Since November 27, Akbar has refused to appear on BBC to speak about the Mumbai attacks.
Many British politicians have also taken up the issue with the BBC management. Steve Pound,a British Parliamentarian who represents North Ealing, has issued a strong statement against BBC's biased policy by saying that it was "the worst sort of mealy-mouthed posturing."
Akbar, had gone a stepahead and has written a strongly-worded e-mail to Richard Porter, head of Content, BBC World News. On December 6, Akbar wrote to Porter that, "I just want to let you know that after decades of friendship and association with the BBC, I refused to give an interview to the BBC over the terrorist outrage in Mumbai. The reason is simple: I am appalled, astonished, livid at your inability to describe the events in Mumbai as the work of terrorists. You have called them 'gunmen' as if they were hired security guards on a night out."
Akbar further argued that, "When Britain finds a group of men plotting in a home laboratory your government has no hesitation in creating an international storm, and the BBC has no hesitation in calling them terrorists. When nearly two hundred Indian lives are lost, you cannot find a word in your dictionary more persuasive than 'gunmen'.
Akbar articulated many Indian fans of the BBC when he said," You are not only pathetic, but you have become utterly biased in your reporting. Since we in India believe in freedom of the press, we can do no more than protest, but let me tell you that your credibility, created over long years by fearless and independent journalists like Mark Tully (I am privileged to describe him as a friend), is in tatters and those tatters will not be patched as long as biased non-journalists like you and your superiors are in charge of decisions. Shame on you and your kind."
Akbar's e-mail was not ignored by BBC. A courteous and very British response did arrive in his mailbox on December 11. Porter had argued that, "The guidelines we issue to staff are very clear-we do not ban the use of the word terrorist, but our preference is to use an alternative form of words. There is a judgement inherent in the use of the word, which is not there when we are more precise with our language. "Gunman", or "killer", or "bomber", is an accurate description which does not come with any form of judgement. However, the word is not banned, and is frequently used on our output-usually when attributed to people. I heard it being used on numerous occasions during our coverage from Mumbai." BBC staffers have guidelines which are a public document
Without going into specifics Porter claimed, "There is no inconsistency in the way the BBC has reported the attacks in Mumbai, compared to what we have done with events in the UK. If we are to be serious about upholding our policy, then we cannot make a distinction between events in any country."
In India most critics have pointed out that how BBC termed the July 7, 2005 attackers in London as "terrorists" without hesitation. While in case of Mumbai they used "gunmen" and at odd places "suspected terrorist."
However, Porter, journalist of 27 years standing, argues, "This policy is the opposite of bias...but it is a difficult one to uphold and is the subject of many discussions within BBC headquarters. Clearly we had the discussion once again in the wake of the Mumbai attacks--and comments like yours are taken very seriously by my editorial colleagues."
In short, the BBC wants its viewers and readers to use their own brains. Porter wrote, ' I believe those audiences can make their own mind up about the people who carried out the attacks in Mumbai and don't need us to give them any label to reach that judgement."
Obviously, Akbar has not accepted these arguments. After thanking "courteousness" of Porter's e-mail to him Akbar asked, " But your response does not answer my question: how does the BBC find it easy to define a terrorist when trains and buses in London are attacked, but must slide towards "non-judgmental" definitions when there is a blatant and murderous display of terrorism in Mumbai? Are you serious when you say that you leave it to audiences to make up their own minds? Then why did you not leave it to audiences to make up their own minds after 9/11? "
Akbar, wrote, "I assume the makers of BBC policies, such as they are, understand English. There is a clear distinction between gunmen and terrorists. Criminals use guns, and can be called gunmen; criminals use guns in the service of crime. Terrorists use guns and worse in the random killing of innocents in pursuit of a political agenda or personal agenda. The killers who came to Taj and Oberoi and the Chatrapati Shivaji railway station and a home where Jewish people lived, did not come to steal art, or railway property or money. They came with the declared purpose of murder and mayhem."
When Akbar was in London, the tabloids were full of headlines about young people being knifed. Akbar says , " that was crime committed by "knifemen". Al Capone was a "gunman" and I am sure the East End of your city once used to produce "gunmen" who committed crimes.
Akbar told Porter, " It is a shame that the BBC cannot see the difference between a criminal and a terrorist, and chooses in fact to protect the terrorist by giving him the camouflage of a criminal. This is not a matter of semantics.Terrorists are always happy to fudge the definition."
http://www.rediff.com//news/2008/dec/14mum...rror-attack.htm
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Separating the Terror and the Terrorists</b>
By CLARK HOYT December 14, 2008
THE PUBLIC EDITOR
WHEN 10 young men in an inflatable lifeboat came ashore in Mumbai last month and went on a rampage with machine guns and grenades, taking hostages, setting fires and murdering men, women and children, they were initially described in The Times by many labels.
They were "militants," "gunmen," "attackers" and "assailants." Their actions, which left bodies strewn in the city's largest train station, five-star hotels, a Jewish center, a cafe and a hospital â were described as "coordinated terrorist attacks." But the men themselves were not called terrorists.
Many readers could not understand it. "I am so offended as to why the NY Times and a number of other news organizations are calling the perpetrators 'militants,' " wrote "Bill" in a comment posted on The Times's Web site. "Murderers, or terrorists perhaps but militants? Is your PC going to get so absurd that you will refer to them as 'freedom fighters?' "
The Mumbai terror attacks posed a familiar semantic issue for Times editors: what to call people who pursue political, religious, territorial, or unidentifiable goals through violence on civilians. Many readers want the newspaper, even on the news pages, to share their moral outrage â or their political views â by adopting the word terrorist, with all its connotations of opprobrium. What you call someone matters. If he is a terrorist, he is an enemy of all civilized people, and his cause is less worthy of consideration.
In the newsroom and at overseas bureaus, especially Jerusalem, there has been a lot of soul-searching about the terminology ofterrorism. Editors and reporters have asked whether, to avoid the appearance of taking sides, the paper bends itself into a pretzel or risks appearing callous to abhorrent acts. They have wrestled with questions like why those responsible for the 9/11 attacks are called terrorists but the murderers of a little girl in her bed in a Jewish settlement are not. And whether, if the use of the word terrorist can be interpreted as a political act, not using it is one too.
The issue comes up most often in connection with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and to the dismay of supporters of Israel â and sometimes supporters of the other side, denouncing Israeli military actions â The Times is sparing in its use of "terrorist" when reporting on that complex struggle.
The reluctance carried over when the Mumbai attacks began. Graham Bowley, who was writing for a Times blog, The Lede, said, "I'm aware very much of the sensitivity around the word, so I knew they had to be 'attackers' " until the paper knew more. One of his editors, Andrea Kannapell, told me she was much more focused in the early hours on who the people were and what they were doing than on what to call them.
Readers like "Bill" were having none of it, and as Jim Roberts, the editor of the Web site, read their comments, he began to think they had a point. "Indiscriminately shooting civilians seems on its very face to be an act of terror," he said. How, Roberts wondered, could you separate the act from the actor?
He conferred with Kannapell, Paul Winfield, the news editor, and Phil Corbett, Winfield's deputy. Winfield talked with Ian Fisher, a deputy foreign editor. "Terrorist" became an acceptable term in the Mumbai story. "We jointly decided we didn't need to be throwing the word around flagrantly, but we didn't need to run away from it, either," Roberts said.
Ilsa and Lisa Klinghoffer, whose father, Leon, was shot and thrown from a cruise ship by Palestinian terrorists in 1985, wrote a letter to the editor asking why The Times was referring to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the shadowy group that apparently orchestrated the Mumbai attacks, as a "militant group." "When people kill innocent civilians for political gain, they should be called 'terrorists,' " the sisters said.
Susan Chira, the foreign editor, said The Times may eventually put that label on Lashkar, but reporters are still trying to learn more about it. "Our instinct is to proceed with caution, not rushing to label any group with the word terrorist before we have a deeper understanding of its full dimensions," she said.
To the consternation of many, The Times does not call Hamas a terrorist organization, though it sponsors acts of terror against Israel. Hamas was elected to govern Gaza. It provides social services and operates charities, hospitals and clinics. Corbett said: "You get to the question: Somebody works in a Hamas clinic â is that person a terrorist? We don't want to go there." I think that is right.
Ethan Bronner, the Jerusalem bureau chief, said, "Our general view is that the word terrorist is politically loaded and overused." But he said that sometimes, "when a person's act has been examined and its intent and result clearly understood, we call him a terrorist." Thus, a front-page story last July called a Lebanese man about to be exchanged for two dead Israeli soldiers a terrorist. The man, a fighter for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, had slipped into Israel nearly 30 years before and murdered a man and his 4-year-old daughter.
James Bennet, now the editor of The Atlantic, was The Times's Jerusalem bureau chief from 2001 through 2004. After his return, he wrote a two-page memo to Chira on the use of "terrorism" and "terrorist" that is still cited by editors, though the paper has no formal policy on the terms. His memo said it was easy to call certain egregious acts terrorism "and have the whole world agree with you." The problem, he said, was where to stop before every stone-throwing Palestinian was called a terrorist and the paper was making a political statement.
Bennet wrote that he initially avoided the word terrorism altogether and thought it more useful to describe an attack in as vivid detail as possible so readers could decide their own labels. But he came to believe that never using the word "felt so morally neutral as to be a little sickening. The calculated bombing of students in a university cafeteria, or of families gathered in an ice-cream parlor, cries out to be called what it is," he wrote.
The memo said he settled on a rough rule: He would use the words, when they fit, to describe attacks within Israel's 1948 borders but not in the occupied West Bank or Gaza, which Israel and the Palestinians have been contending over since Israel took them in 1967. When a gunman infiltrated a settlement and killed a 5-year-old girl in her bed, Bennet did not call it terrorism. "All I could do was default to my first approach and describe the attack and the victims as vividly as I could."
I do not think it is possible to write a set of hard and fast rules for the T-words, and I think The Times is both thoughtful about them and maybe a bit more conservative in their use than I would be.
My own broad guideline: If it looks as if it was intended to sow terror and it shocks the conscience, whether it is planes flying into the World Trade Center, gunmen shooting up Mumbai, or a political killer in a little girl's bedroom, I'd call it terrorism â by terrorists.
The public editor can be reached by e-mail: public@nytimes.com.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/opinion/...agewanted=print
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sheela Bhatt in Mumbai | December 14, 2008 | 18:10 IST
The British Broadcasting Corporation, a state-sponsored but independently run, media organization has attracted sharp criticism for having "double-standards" in its coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks. Most times the BBC reporters referred to the terrorists who attacked Mumbai as "gunmen" or "militants".
Well-known thinker and editor-in-chief of Covert magazine, MJ Akbar has taken up the issue seriously. Since November 27, Akbar has refused to appear on BBC to speak about the Mumbai attacks.
Many British politicians have also taken up the issue with the BBC management. Steve Pound,a British Parliamentarian who represents North Ealing, has issued a strong statement against BBC's biased policy by saying that it was "the worst sort of mealy-mouthed posturing."
Akbar, had gone a stepahead and has written a strongly-worded e-mail to Richard Porter, head of Content, BBC World News. On December 6, Akbar wrote to Porter that, "I just want to let you know that after decades of friendship and association with the BBC, I refused to give an interview to the BBC over the terrorist outrage in Mumbai. The reason is simple: I am appalled, astonished, livid at your inability to describe the events in Mumbai as the work of terrorists. You have called them 'gunmen' as if they were hired security guards on a night out."
Akbar further argued that, "When Britain finds a group of men plotting in a home laboratory your government has no hesitation in creating an international storm, and the BBC has no hesitation in calling them terrorists. When nearly two hundred Indian lives are lost, you cannot find a word in your dictionary more persuasive than 'gunmen'.
Akbar articulated many Indian fans of the BBC when he said," You are not only pathetic, but you have become utterly biased in your reporting. Since we in India believe in freedom of the press, we can do no more than protest, but let me tell you that your credibility, created over long years by fearless and independent journalists like Mark Tully (I am privileged to describe him as a friend), is in tatters and those tatters will not be patched as long as biased non-journalists like you and your superiors are in charge of decisions. Shame on you and your kind."
Akbar's e-mail was not ignored by BBC. A courteous and very British response did arrive in his mailbox on December 11. Porter had argued that, "The guidelines we issue to staff are very clear-we do not ban the use of the word terrorist, but our preference is to use an alternative form of words. There is a judgement inherent in the use of the word, which is not there when we are more precise with our language. "Gunman", or "killer", or "bomber", is an accurate description which does not come with any form of judgement. However, the word is not banned, and is frequently used on our output-usually when attributed to people. I heard it being used on numerous occasions during our coverage from Mumbai." BBC staffers have guidelines which are a public document
Without going into specifics Porter claimed, "There is no inconsistency in the way the BBC has reported the attacks in Mumbai, compared to what we have done with events in the UK. If we are to be serious about upholding our policy, then we cannot make a distinction between events in any country."
In India most critics have pointed out that how BBC termed the July 7, 2005 attackers in London as "terrorists" without hesitation. While in case of Mumbai they used "gunmen" and at odd places "suspected terrorist."
However, Porter, journalist of 27 years standing, argues, "This policy is the opposite of bias...but it is a difficult one to uphold and is the subject of many discussions within BBC headquarters. Clearly we had the discussion once again in the wake of the Mumbai attacks--and comments like yours are taken very seriously by my editorial colleagues."
In short, the BBC wants its viewers and readers to use their own brains. Porter wrote, ' I believe those audiences can make their own mind up about the people who carried out the attacks in Mumbai and don't need us to give them any label to reach that judgement."
Obviously, Akbar has not accepted these arguments. After thanking "courteousness" of Porter's e-mail to him Akbar asked, " But your response does not answer my question: how does the BBC find it easy to define a terrorist when trains and buses in London are attacked, but must slide towards "non-judgmental" definitions when there is a blatant and murderous display of terrorism in Mumbai? Are you serious when you say that you leave it to audiences to make up their own minds? Then why did you not leave it to audiences to make up their own minds after 9/11? "
Akbar, wrote, "I assume the makers of BBC policies, such as they are, understand English. There is a clear distinction between gunmen and terrorists. Criminals use guns, and can be called gunmen; criminals use guns in the service of crime. Terrorists use guns and worse in the random killing of innocents in pursuit of a political agenda or personal agenda. The killers who came to Taj and Oberoi and the Chatrapati Shivaji railway station and a home where Jewish people lived, did not come to steal art, or railway property or money. They came with the declared purpose of murder and mayhem."
When Akbar was in London, the tabloids were full of headlines about young people being knifed. Akbar says , " that was crime committed by "knifemen". Al Capone was a "gunman" and I am sure the East End of your city once used to produce "gunmen" who committed crimes.
Akbar told Porter, " It is a shame that the BBC cannot see the difference between a criminal and a terrorist, and chooses in fact to protect the terrorist by giving him the camouflage of a criminal. This is not a matter of semantics.Terrorists are always happy to fudge the definition."
http://www.rediff.com//news/2008/dec/14mum...rror-attack.htm
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Separating the Terror and the Terrorists</b>
By CLARK HOYT December 14, 2008
THE PUBLIC EDITOR
WHEN 10 young men in an inflatable lifeboat came ashore in Mumbai last month and went on a rampage with machine guns and grenades, taking hostages, setting fires and murdering men, women and children, they were initially described in The Times by many labels.
They were "militants," "gunmen," "attackers" and "assailants." Their actions, which left bodies strewn in the city's largest train station, five-star hotels, a Jewish center, a cafe and a hospital â were described as "coordinated terrorist attacks." But the men themselves were not called terrorists.
Many readers could not understand it. "I am so offended as to why the NY Times and a number of other news organizations are calling the perpetrators 'militants,' " wrote "Bill" in a comment posted on The Times's Web site. "Murderers, or terrorists perhaps but militants? Is your PC going to get so absurd that you will refer to them as 'freedom fighters?' "
The Mumbai terror attacks posed a familiar semantic issue for Times editors: what to call people who pursue political, religious, territorial, or unidentifiable goals through violence on civilians. Many readers want the newspaper, even on the news pages, to share their moral outrage â or their political views â by adopting the word terrorist, with all its connotations of opprobrium. What you call someone matters. If he is a terrorist, he is an enemy of all civilized people, and his cause is less worthy of consideration.
In the newsroom and at overseas bureaus, especially Jerusalem, there has been a lot of soul-searching about the terminology ofterrorism. Editors and reporters have asked whether, to avoid the appearance of taking sides, the paper bends itself into a pretzel or risks appearing callous to abhorrent acts. They have wrestled with questions like why those responsible for the 9/11 attacks are called terrorists but the murderers of a little girl in her bed in a Jewish settlement are not. And whether, if the use of the word terrorist can be interpreted as a political act, not using it is one too.
The issue comes up most often in connection with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and to the dismay of supporters of Israel â and sometimes supporters of the other side, denouncing Israeli military actions â The Times is sparing in its use of "terrorist" when reporting on that complex struggle.
The reluctance carried over when the Mumbai attacks began. Graham Bowley, who was writing for a Times blog, The Lede, said, "I'm aware very much of the sensitivity around the word, so I knew they had to be 'attackers' " until the paper knew more. One of his editors, Andrea Kannapell, told me she was much more focused in the early hours on who the people were and what they were doing than on what to call them.
Readers like "Bill" were having none of it, and as Jim Roberts, the editor of the Web site, read their comments, he began to think they had a point. "Indiscriminately shooting civilians seems on its very face to be an act of terror," he said. How, Roberts wondered, could you separate the act from the actor?
He conferred with Kannapell, Paul Winfield, the news editor, and Phil Corbett, Winfield's deputy. Winfield talked with Ian Fisher, a deputy foreign editor. "Terrorist" became an acceptable term in the Mumbai story. "We jointly decided we didn't need to be throwing the word around flagrantly, but we didn't need to run away from it, either," Roberts said.
Ilsa and Lisa Klinghoffer, whose father, Leon, was shot and thrown from a cruise ship by Palestinian terrorists in 1985, wrote a letter to the editor asking why The Times was referring to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the shadowy group that apparently orchestrated the Mumbai attacks, as a "militant group." "When people kill innocent civilians for political gain, they should be called 'terrorists,' " the sisters said.
Susan Chira, the foreign editor, said The Times may eventually put that label on Lashkar, but reporters are still trying to learn more about it. "Our instinct is to proceed with caution, not rushing to label any group with the word terrorist before we have a deeper understanding of its full dimensions," she said.
To the consternation of many, The Times does not call Hamas a terrorist organization, though it sponsors acts of terror against Israel. Hamas was elected to govern Gaza. It provides social services and operates charities, hospitals and clinics. Corbett said: "You get to the question: Somebody works in a Hamas clinic â is that person a terrorist? We don't want to go there." I think that is right.
Ethan Bronner, the Jerusalem bureau chief, said, "Our general view is that the word terrorist is politically loaded and overused." But he said that sometimes, "when a person's act has been examined and its intent and result clearly understood, we call him a terrorist." Thus, a front-page story last July called a Lebanese man about to be exchanged for two dead Israeli soldiers a terrorist. The man, a fighter for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, had slipped into Israel nearly 30 years before and murdered a man and his 4-year-old daughter.
James Bennet, now the editor of The Atlantic, was The Times's Jerusalem bureau chief from 2001 through 2004. After his return, he wrote a two-page memo to Chira on the use of "terrorism" and "terrorist" that is still cited by editors, though the paper has no formal policy on the terms. His memo said it was easy to call certain egregious acts terrorism "and have the whole world agree with you." The problem, he said, was where to stop before every stone-throwing Palestinian was called a terrorist and the paper was making a political statement.
Bennet wrote that he initially avoided the word terrorism altogether and thought it more useful to describe an attack in as vivid detail as possible so readers could decide their own labels. But he came to believe that never using the word "felt so morally neutral as to be a little sickening. The calculated bombing of students in a university cafeteria, or of families gathered in an ice-cream parlor, cries out to be called what it is," he wrote.
The memo said he settled on a rough rule: He would use the words, when they fit, to describe attacks within Israel's 1948 borders but not in the occupied West Bank or Gaza, which Israel and the Palestinians have been contending over since Israel took them in 1967. When a gunman infiltrated a settlement and killed a 5-year-old girl in her bed, Bennet did not call it terrorism. "All I could do was default to my first approach and describe the attack and the victims as vividly as I could."
I do not think it is possible to write a set of hard and fast rules for the T-words, and I think The Times is both thoughtful about them and maybe a bit more conservative in their use than I would be.
My own broad guideline: If it looks as if it was intended to sow terror and it shocks the conscience, whether it is planes flying into the World Trade Center, gunmen shooting up Mumbai, or a political killer in a little girl's bedroom, I'd call it terrorism â by terrorists.
The public editor can be reached by e-mail: public@nytimes.com.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/opinion/...agewanted=print
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->