Here’s yet another sign that these days BBC stands for Bad British Copy editors:
The BBC has re-edited some of its coverage of the London Underground and bus bombings to avoid labelling the perpetrators as “terrorists”, it was disclosed yesterday.
Early reporting of the attacks on the BBC’s website spoke of terrorists but the same coverage was changed to describe the attackers simply as “bombers”.
The BBC’s guidelines state that its credibility is undermined by the “careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments”.
Consequently, “the word ‘terrorist’ itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding” and its use should be “avoided”, the guidelines say.
What’s fascinating about this piece in the Telegraph, is that in the last paragraph the BBC denies banning the word terrorist. Yet, its guidelines say ONE THING…and copy was CHANGED.
This suggests that some pc copy guardians copy editors made the changes in keeping with BBC guidelines but since emotions are (obviously) riding high in London some BBC bigwigs are cringing at a hassle over this. So they’re trying to have it both ways. We thought only U.S. presidential administrations do that.
Sorry. On this one you can’t. This is a blog and we’ll say it: the people who blew up the trains were TERRORISTS. And your American counterpart journalists, who are oftentimes compared unfavorably to you in other journalistic ways, are correct on this one: they are TERRORISTS.
This journalist ballet to ensure that the BBC not hurt the feelings of those readers in other parts of the world (or Great Britain) who believe its OK to plant bombs and scatter body parts of men, women, children who’ve barely lived, or behead screaming and terrified tied up prisoners does not help the BBC’s credibility but merely accentuates a growing belief that a nice, thorough housecleaning might do the BBC some good.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.