1y ago

Why BBC doesn't call Hamas militants 'terrorists' - John Simpson

www.bbc.co.uk Why BBC doesn't call Hamas militants 'terrorists' - John Simpson

It's simply not the BBC's job to tell people who to support and who to condemn, writes the BBC's World Affairs editor.

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.

174 comments

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.
  
  Regardless of their wording, BBC news has a super Israel bias, and they even got called out on live TV during the news for it. They are not the place for unbiased reporting of this specific issue. The UK will always pretend Israel can do no wrong because they created them.
- 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?
- It is biased and wrong, you can see by the obvious problem in their research, like Hamas is considered terrorists by the entire western world, therefore saying that you don't call them that because you don't want people to tell what to think is terrorism support.
  
  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.
  
  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
  
  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 journalism.
  Coming to the conclusion that someone is a terrorist, isn't news or journalism. 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.
  Eg.
  Good: According to Mr. X, the apple was red and tasty. - the journalist is simply reporting on what Mr. X said. The reader can decide if Mr. X was telling the truth.
  Bad: According to Mr. X, the red apple was tasty. - the journalist wasn't there to see if the apple was red, Mr. X could be mistaken. The reader doesn't realise that the colour of the apple was described as being red by Mr. X and can't form their own opinion on whether to believe Mr. X.
  The journalist doesn't avoid mentioning the apple is allegedly red. They just make it clear that they themselves aren't saying what colour it is, as they weren't there to witness what colour it was and because their opinion doesn't matter
  And I know this may sound stupid, but it helps avoid (inadvertent) bias or accusations thereof.

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.
- ???? 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"

It’s so refreshing to see real journalistic integrity once in a while. Thanks for sharing.
- I mean the guy has integrity so that's good. But the BBC and integrity are not two words that go together
  
  Yeah, this was for the journalist, not the outlet. I agree with you on that front.

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
  
  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.
  
  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 don't think you need to call hamas what they are, a far right fundamentalist extremist terrorist organisation. Their actions speak for themselves.
- What they mean as that they could also say Israel is a terrorist state. That’s what some people think. And some people, specially those who have friends or family who have been killed in Palestina, might say that Hamas are defending their people and are not terrorists.
  But you and me, citizens without voice, can call them terrorists (that’s what they are) but doing so we are somehow chosing a band in a conflict.
  
  I'm not sure I'd call Israel a terrorist state, but absolutely an apartheid state.
  If you live in Gaza, you really don't have a lot to lose by attacking Israeli non-combatants, because you have no hope, and the Israeli gov't keeps going farther and farther to the right. Gaza looks a lot like the Warsaw ghettos prior to rounding all the Jews up and murdering them. The uprisings in the Warsaw ghetto were punished with the same kind of wildly disproportionate force as we're already seeing Israel use against Gaza.
  Hamas and Palestinian militants were, and are, wrong to target and murder non-combatants. And, at the same time, Israel has been doing exactly the same fucking thing for 20-odd years now; from 2008 through 2020, more than 120,000 Palestinians--mostly non-combatants--were wounded or killed by the Israeli military. In that same time period, 6,000 Israelis were wounded or killed by Palestinian militants.
  Israel can not claim to be a democracy, because they refuse to give Palestinians a voice in government at all.
  As an aside, the parallels between how Israel has treated Palestinians, and how the US has treated Native Americans is uncomfortable.
  
  While I get what you mean, I don't think it should automatically mean (even a lot of people think it does) that you can either say Hamas is a terrorist group or Israel is a terrorist state.
  In my own view both are terrorist, both commit atrocities and the result of that are innocent lives lost from both sides.
  I despise centrism so saying that hurts a little bit on the inside, but this is one of the rare cases where fighting at all is meaningless and both sides that are fighting (and commiting atrocities) are in the fault.

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.
  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18289996/

Commendable to resist such pressure and remain as objective as possible

Based

And be sure to follow them on the fediverse: @BBC_News_Labs@social.bbc
- Is it possible to follow a mastodon account on lemmy?
  
  Not presently, see discussion here.

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!

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.
No-one, except for racists who work for the genocide of that population.
But this doesn't mean that we should start saying that the organisation whose supporters have carried them out is a terrorist organisation, because that would mean we were abandoning our duty to stay objective.
That makes it sound as if the Hamas was a regular, military organization with legitimate goals, which eventually settles their dispute at the negotiating table. And I think that's giving a false picture of that organization. But let's hear what they have to say about themselves:
Quoted from article 7:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
Quoted from article 13:
There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.
These people (Hamas, not Palestinians) see it as their religious duty to kill all Jews.
I think the BBC's position makes sense in most conflicts, but not in this one. They probably just try to appease both sides, with an explanation that sounds reasonable, if you don't look too much behind the curtains.

Is this true? I was sure when Jeremy Corbyn criticised Israel, he was labelled as a terrorist sympathiser and anti-semite by the state media.
Just as a disclaimer, I can't really remember and was never particularly interested in English politics at this time, so I have no opinions on Corbyn, or know if he really did make anti-semetic comments or not. I do remember the tabloid papers going wild on this, I was sure the BBC voiced this or allowed guests to voice this all the time.
- The BBC would never have labelled him that. They might have quote other saying it. Big difference
  
  Sometimes it's not a big difference. Using several different quotes in one article, all of which use the word 'terrorist' or other emotionally loaded words, is a clear indication that they think he's a terrorist whilst technically remaining 'neutral' because they're only quoting rather than forming a position

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

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?
- I still can’t understand why naming Hamas a terrorist group goes against their “present only the facts” view. It’s the same group that raped and killed civilians just six days ago. They posted videos of their horrid raid on the internet and plan to stream hostage executions. These are facts, it is not subjective. Isn’t this the plain definition of terrorism? Why is BBC reluctant to brand a group that performs acts of terror as terrorists? This goes for how they treated IRA stories as well. I really can’t see how this adheres to good journalism principles, unlike many people here seem to be praising. It just seems to me a weird hill to die on.

174 comments