'Terrorist'

Natalie Solent has an excellent post up at Biased BBC on usage and avoidance with regard to the word 'terrorist'. I urge you to read it. She writes:

I am in no doubt that the strained avoidance of the word terrorist by Reuters, the Associated Press, the Guardian, the Independent and other privately run organisations does take place and is morally wrong. I have been told by an employee of Reuters that it is company policy not to use the T-word, and that the policy causes anger among many employees.

But I object less strongly in the case of these private organisations than I do in the case of the BBC, because... unlike Reuters et al the BBC is paid for by a compulsory tax on the British people. It goes out under the name of my country. Come charter renewal time, the domestic BBC justifies the license fee by saying that we, the British people, are getting a public good... Likewise the BBC World Service, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the same Vote as the British Council, explicitly presents itself as bringing a benefit to Britain and the world.

But there is no more rock-bottom public good or benefit than not being randomly murdered. The BBC is obliged by its Charter and accompanying agreement to show "due impartiality" between political opinions but this is specifically stated not to mean "detachment from fundamental democratic* principles." The BBC has no more right to be impartial between a victim of terrorism and a terrorist than it has the right to be impartial between a rape victim and a rapist. (Although it must be careful to respect the right to a fair trial of those accused of rape, terrorism or any other crime.)

As well as endorsing this with regard specifically to what Natalie says about the BBC, I would like to support her contention that it is morally wrong for papers like the Guardian and the Independent to avoid calling terrorists by their proper name.

First, I'll deal with what I suspect to be the primary reason for this avoidance: namely, a worry about appearing to judge the wider cause on behalf of which those who use terrorist means claim to be acting. But it needn't imply that. One may think the purported cause - say, Chechen independence, or the ending of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza - just, and still condemn the use of terror, the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, for what it is, a crime. (This follows from the distinction which Natalie refers to between jus ad bellum and jus in bello: the justice of (the) war; and justice in war, concerning the use of just means.)

Second, that is what terrorism indeed is. It is a crime. It is a crime against humanity under international law, as well as violating the oldest and most fundamental moral taboo - that against deliberately killing the innocent. For would-be liberal media to adopt a supposedly neutral (avoidance) policy towards clear and forthright language in reporting this crime is exactly as if they were to start calling torturers 'operatives' or some such. Natalie's point about being neutral as between the rape victim and the rapist is very much to the point.

Third, and more generally, the aforesaid liberal media should not adopt a neutral stance, either, in conflicts between democratic and anti-democratic forces. To be sure, their duty is to the truth, as far as they are able effectively to serve it; and it is clearly the case that democratic politicians as well as anti-democratic ones are capable of being less than honest, even of lying. Therefore, responsible media need to maintain a properly critical distance between themselves and all political actors and spokespeople, including those acting within, or for, democratic polities. But of the types of political order known to us, democracies provide a better basis for getting (eventually) at the truth about anything, because of their openness to different viewpoints, a plurality of voices, freedom of belief and opinion, and so forth. Those who murder the innocent for any political cause adopt the most anti-democratic course there is - depriving the people they oppose of their voice, not only now, but forever. A democratic press shouldn't be neutral towards such forces, neither in substance, nor in terminology.