I guess not strictly news - but with all of the vitriol I have seen in discussions on the Israel situation, that have boiled down to arguments over wording, I feel that this take from the BBC is worthy of some discussion.
Mods, feel free to remove if this is not newsy enough.
It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn - who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.
I miss when this was the standard for news. Now most (e: major) outlets don’t even try to pretend they have no bias and instead push a subjective point. Even when I agree with the point, I don’t like it when my “news” pushes it instead of just, you know, reporting.
Give me the info and let me form my own opinions.
The news in Australia literally adds dramatic music to their edits. They’re disgraceful, and manipulative.
I think your confusing a current affair/today tonight with actual news programs. I channel surf from 5-7:30pm and have never heard the main news programs of 7, 9, 10, SBS, nor the ABC editorialise like that in my 38yrs on this planet. At a stretch, they play clips of articles they’ve already covered at the end with the shows theme song over the top.
While us Brits love to complain about the BBC being biased (probably an actual issue for internal UK politics) its good to remember that it’s still a world leading media outlet, and one of very few that can be considered not to be push an agenda. (I imagine I can find a lot of people that can probably disagree with that too…)
Even Routers has started editorialising, and I thought they were just meant to be raw facts!
Pretty much all news sources are good for something, so long as it’s outside of their bias’ sphere of influence. A fully state run national news outlet can potentially give very unbiased news about events in another country - maybe even better than local news sources - so long as there isn’t some conflict of interest.
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A man’s called a terrorist or liberator
A rich man’s a thief or philanthropist
Is one a crusader or ruthless invader?
It’s all in which label is able to persist
There are precious few at ease
With moral ambiguities
So we act as though they don’t exist
It does sound wonderful.
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For most of german people at the time, yes
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You misunderstand.
Proper old-school journalists, like John Simpson, won’t be quick to call someone a terrorist. They will however report on someone who called them a terrorist.
It is their job to report the facts. That means that they report what they see and what they hear. Nothing more. That is news.
Coming to the conclusion that someone is a terrorist, isn’t news. It’s analysis or opinion. Often the journalist is in no position to form an opinion either way, and it’s not really his job anyway.
The reason this sounds weird to many, is because journalism has gone down the shitter. This used to be standard. Reuters for example, is still quite rigorous in this. But most news organisations now mix factual reporting with analysis. Some ‘news’ organisations remove the news/facts entirely.
Basically, reading an article written by a good journalist, you should not be able to tell what side of the argument they are. Although this can sometimes also cause issues, like false balance.
It’s spelled “Xitter” now… as in “going down the Xitter”.
I disagree; it’s a loaded, politicized word. Even if you say that the “entire western world” considers Hamas a terrorist organization, that’s a sweeping generalization which, even if it could be called 100% true, does not represent the whole world.
Tell me the facts without giving me those loaded words. I’m smart enough to draw my own conclusions.
Absolutely.
It’s also a testament to the terrifying numbing that the passage of time has on events.
They describe WW2 where they called the Nazis, “the enemy”, then in the next sentence compare The IRA to the fucking Nazis.
Not even remotely close.
then in the next sentence compare The IRA to the fucking Nazis.
What? Did we read the same article? Maybe I’m suffering from a reading comprehension deficit, here, but that wasn’t my interpretation at all. Could you quote where you think they draw that comparison?
The same thing’s happening in Canada with the CBC; bunch of people calling them out for not saying “terrorist” implying it means they’re in favour of the attacks, when CBC simply has a policy of not saying that about anyone, because it’s not their job.
This is why we need CBC and can’t let the Conservative Party of Canada destroy them.
I generally don’t like the CBC, but I personally find their international political reporting top tier due to this kind of approach.
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Opinion and interview pieces are obviously different. I didn’t realize Trudeau worked for the cbc.
As long as they are balanced, if you only ever have opinion pieces from one opinion, your just being biased by proxy.
This can lead to being over balanced though and inviting climate deniers etc.
I have to disagree.
Best example comes to us via the BBC above, during WW2 they never called the Nazis wicked or evil, but they did not and did not need to have Nazi-apologists on air to present a “fair and balanced” view Fox-News style.
As long as you present opinion as opinion and reporting as reporting and refrain from loaded language in your reporting you’re perfectly fine. Could it be better? Yes. But while you might not have arrived at “morally good”, you have clearly left “morally bad”.
??? They call neo-nazis terrorists.
Because they unambiguously are. Nobody reasonable is debating that. We’re never going to look back and say “actually they were right”
So burning babies is ambiguous to you?
It’s so refreshing to see real journalistic integrity once in a while. Thanks for sharing.
Terrorist isn’t really the right word to use. What’s going on over there is bilateral genocide. That’s the appropriate term to use.
It’s a very one-sided genocide. It’s just plain ridiculous to equate the two sides when it was Zionists who stormed the Arab mandate in 1947, Zionists (and later, Israel) who created hundreds of thousands of refugees with millions still stuck in miserable camps on the borders, Israel who has kept Palestinians under brutal occupation and blockade since 1967, and Israel who bombs densely populated cities with fighter jets while the brand new Hamas air force is using hang-gliders powered by fans.
It’s such a difficult thing to explain to people whose primary exposure to the conflict is through the Western media but these accounts, by two Palestinian and Israeli non-violent activists, are well worth a read. Unfortunately I can’t find the original transcripts so it’s a google books extract and is missing some of George’s testimony.
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This is hardcore and I respect the shit out of it
No, it’s announcing their cowardice. They use ‘terrorist’ for any other non-Israel/Palestine attack (9/11, London Bridge, 7/7, etc) so the entire argument is invalid.
The lawyers told them not to because everyone’s scared of being called anti-semitic, that’s all
The lawyers told them not to because everyone’s scared of being called anti-semitic, that’s all
Honest question, how would labelling the Hamas as terrorists get them to be called anti-semitic?
Anti-semitic, as far as I know, means “against Jews” both in academics and colloquially. Hamas aren’t Jews.
Maybe you meant something like islamophobe instead?
I approve of it. Terrorist is a loaded term designed to draw an emotional response from the reader. Every nation could be called a terrorist organization. Any rebellion could be called terrorists. It’s not a useful term. It’s especially not useful in this case because the number killed by Israel is so much higher than Hamas.
Terrorist is generally just a term used to describe those without power using the tools of their oppressor against them. Fear and violence are only “allowed” to be used if you’re the one with power, for whatever reason. It’s stupid.
Domestic attacks and attacks against allies will be called terrorist attacks obviously, because they see value in supporting the status quo.
Well sure, I agree. But the BBC isn’t taking the moral high ground here. They have previously and will again use the word ‘terrorist’ to evoke an emotional response for international attacks.
It’s a decision that senior lawyers are criticising - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/11/bbc-not-calling-hamas-terrorists-ofcom-top-lawyers/
Interestingly, on their Bitsize page, they describe the Palestinian Liberation Front as a terrorist group, which is true. The mere fact that they have a page on ‘terrorism’ indicates that they don’t take a moral position against the word, just against calling Israel (and Israeli factions/allies) terrorists - https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zy7nqhv/revision/1
Based
John Simpson is a legend. His book, A Mad World, My Masters, is exceptional reading.
The guy has been reporting since before many of us were even born. If you can catch his show on the BBC it’s a great antidote to the sensationalized, biased reporting that passes for journalism these days.
I don’t think you need to call hamas what they are, a far right fundamentalist extremist terrorist organisation. Their actions speak for themselves.
Commendable to resist such pressure and remain as objective as possible
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Manchester was a terror attack.
Under international law the Palestinians have a right to resist the occupation. That their tactics are not always in accordance with international law is a point you can make only if you recognise that Israel violates these laws far more frequently, and far more brutally, causing far more deaths and an indescribable amount of misery for millions, every day.
The BBC will never describe Israel as a terrorist state and so they are quite correct not to label Palestinian resistance as terrorism.
It could be an interesting thing to go through various incidents and look, it might boil down to if the parties involved both hold territory?
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Learn how to read
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Government ministers, newspaper columnists, ordinary people - they’re all asking why the BBC doesn’t say the Hamas gunmen who carried out appalling atrocities in southern Israel are terrorists.
We regularly point out that the British and other governments have condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation, but that’s their business.
As it happens, of course, many of the people who’ve attacked us for not using the word terrorist have seen our pictures, heard our audio or read our stories, and made up their minds on the basis of our reporting, so it’s not as though we’re hiding the truth in any way - far from it.
No-one can possibly defend the murder of civilians, especially children and even babies - nor attacks on innocent, peace-loving people who are attending a music festival.
There was huge pressure from the government of Margaret Thatcher on the BBC, and on individual reporters like me about this - especially after the Brighton bombing, where she just escaped death and so many other innocent people were killed and injured.
That’s why people in Britain and right round the world, in huge numbers, watch, read and listen to what we say, every single day.
The original article contains 595 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
So, basically: people performed atrocities. Are they evil? Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, the BBC has no idea whether it is evil to perform atrocities. Right.
So basically, you can’t read above a 2nd grade level.
BBC is saying they report the facts and let people make their own judgements. I know this might be hard for your biased mind to understand, but the word ‘terrorist’ has been thrown around so much it’s practically meaningless. Heck, even when it should be applied (American terrorists shooting substations), it isn’t. It’s a political term at this point, nothing more.
You’re trying to advocate for news outlets to tell us how to think instead of showing us information, which is shitty journalism for idiots.
They are saying they do not use language that makes judgement, because that is not what they do. They are a neutral reporter of what is happening in the world (ie the news).
Everyone laments that “news” has been overrun by opinion journalism that tries to influence left or right. This is what “just news” looks like.
No, they will report on the attrocities committed. Is it important for you for the BBC to tell you whether the attrocities are evil or not?
The BBC trying to stay neutral on such an emotionally loaded subject is very suspicious.
Why? The guidelines say they report on what actually happened in these events.
Cause the BBC hasn’t been neutral in the past when it comes the the Israel / Palestine conflict
This isn’t an Israeli/Palentine issue. The guidance on the use of wording is general.
