“Shooters”. “Fighters”. But not “terrorists”. In the context of the attacks and atrocities against civilians perpetrated on Saturday October 7 by Hamas on Israeli territory, the BBC has come under fire in the United Kingdom for its choice not to use the latter word to designate the authors.
As of the afternoon of October 7, The Jewish Chronicle looked into this “refusal”, analyzing it as “the reflection of a deeper unease among many of our audiovisual media: the idea that there is always two sides of the same story”. Its author, the writer and former editor Stephen Pollard, then delved into the subject.
“We hear a lot about the anti-Israel bias of the BBC (and other media). But that’s not the right way to look at the problem. They do not deliberately write their articles to condemn Israel. The problem is worse than that. Since they don’t see that there can be a point of view to a description – that calling a terrorist a terrorist is more accurate than calling him a militant – they don’t realize that they are providing a platform for apologists of terror to explain how it is justified.”
The Jewish Chronicle reports that this same argument, almost word for word, was made by the Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, on Sky News. The channel applies the same rule as the British public broadcasting network.
This article is originally published on courrierinternational.com
