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| Fair and Balanced? |
| 07.27.05 (2:31 pm) [edit] |
|
How fried does the corporate brain of the CBC have to be to issue a memo like the following one to its news staff a couple of days after the first round of terrorist bombings in London? Distributed to staff at cbc.ca, after some poor worker bee made the egregious error of referring to the London transit bombings as "terror attacks" -- which the CBC later went in and retroactively changed to "attacks" in the best traditions of the Ministry of Truth in 1984 -- it reads in part: "'Terrorist' and 'terrorism': use extreme caution before using either word ... Rather than calling assailants 'terrorists', we can refer to them as bombers, hijackers, gunmen (if we're sure no women were in the group (my italics)), militants, extremists, attackers or some other appropriate noun." Now, it's not even the CBC's policy of refusing to call "terrorists" and "terrorism" terrorists and terrorism because it would be "taking sides" (!?) that's the most ludicrous thing here. While absurd, that's been CBC practice for years, frequently defended by CBC News editor-in-chief Tony Burman, who's also quoted in the memo. Like the BBC and Reuters, the CBC refuses to call "terrorism" terrorism unless it's attributed to a third party, or contained is a direct quote. But to me, it's the added warning from the CBC that, before using a word like "gunmen" to describe terrorists, CBC staffers must first ensure that "no women were in the group" that places this policy firmly into the realm of Brave New World. I mean, how far jammed up your own politically correct butt do you have to be not to realize how stupid that sounds? What's the CBC's big concern here -- that using the term "gunmen" as a substitute for "terrorists" might offend any female "gunpersons" in the group? Surely, it's not a concern about accuracy, because if the CBC was concerned about accuracy , it wouldn't issue orders not to call terrorists ... let's see ... what's the word I'm looking for here? ... oh, yeah ... TERRORISTS. He gets it. Go read the rest. http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Golds tein_Lorrie/2005/07/26/11 48752.html" title="http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Golds tein_Lorrie/2005/07/26/11 48752.html" target="_blank"http://www.torontosun.com/New... |
posted by: mblog (reply)
post date: 07.28.05 (12:18 pm)
To paraphrase the Supreme Court, it's hard to define terrorism, but I know it when I see it.
The problem is that once you try to define it, it becomes much harder to have a political agenda. You can't call the London bombers terrorists and call Arafat a freedom fighter.
On the one hand, you can't be sure that something is a terrorist attack until you know the motive. On the other hand, once a group takes credit, it's pretty easy.
posted by: thoolou (reply)
post date: 07.28.05 (12:31 pm)
Reply to: mblog
Insightful, and very true.
