[Media-watch] FW: [media-culture] Handle with care: words like 'conflict', `terrorist'

[David Miller]

Miami Herald
Jan. 4, 2004
OPINION
Handle with care: words like 'conflict', `terrorist'
JOURNALISTS MUST CONSIDER NUANCES
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/7621087.htm

``[This is] a battle over language sometimes more than over anything
else.'' -- Diana Buttu, legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation
Organization, in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor.

Finding the correct words to describe news events should be second nature
to us. Words are, after all, at the core of what journalists do.

But in times of war, real or threatened, words transform into weapons
furiously wielded by all sides. Choosing the correct one -- that is, a word
that doesn't work to the benefit or the harm of one side -- is anything but
simple.

A particularly astute reader may have detected this words-as-weapons tussle
earlier this year when U.S. troops and air power battled toward Baghdad.
The antiseptic language of the military -- used during its daily briefings
about Iraq's ''attrited forces'' and the regime's ''softened targets'' --
were euphemisms for the death-dealing might of our weaponry. The difference
between attrited soldiers and slaughtered ones may be in the eye of the
beholder.

But nowhere is the battle over semantics more intensely waged than in the
Middle East and, in particular, amid the conflict between Israelis and the
Palestinians.

Did I say ``conflict''?

To most of us that word would seem a safe enough description of what's
going on. In fact, the Israeli government uses the phrase ''armed
conflict'' to refer to the violence.

But to Palestinians, it is the intifada -- the Arabic word for uprising.
And that connotes something different, the oppressed rising up against the
oppressor, which suits the Palestinian political agenda of portraying
Israel as the occupier. As a result, a journalist who seeks neutrality must
use the word carefully or not at all.

Culture, too, plays a part in this struggle over language. To most of the
world, someone who straps a bomb around his or her waist and sets out to
kill others, including themselves, is a suicide bomber (many Israeli
sympathizers prefer the description homicide bomber).

But to Palestinians who sanction such acts, the person is a martyr -- a
term that both implies victimhood and is necessary to get around the
Islamic prohibition against suicide. Never mind that the bomber has no
intention of surviving.

Clearly, the most fiercely debated words commonly used in news reports from
the region are ''terrorist'' and ''militant.'' Again, to most readers,
these words carry distinct -- and different -- meanings, each one rather
obvious.

But not so to many Western news organizations.

Cull the work of such news agencies as The Associated Press and Reuters,
and newspapers such as The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The
New York Times -- as many partisan watchdog organizations on both sides of
the conflict do -- and you'll see that the word ''terrorist'' rarely
appears unless in a direct quote from someone sympathetic to the victims.

When a Palestinian woman walked into a crowded beach restaurant in Haifa a
few weeks ago and detonated a bomb, she killed 19 people, including three
children.

REUTERS ACCOUNT

Yet in a Reuters account, only in the official White House comment was the
woman accused of terrorism. According to Reuters, she had waged an
''attack'' -- the verbiage of war -- in retaliation for previous Israeli
army actions. The account also said the bombing showed that Palestinian
leaders had failed to ''rein in militants,'' an apparent reference to the
bomber.

This isn't inadvertent. A Reuters editor once famously explained that ``one
man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.''

Broadly speaking, there's some truth to that. An Iraqi loyalist to Saddam
Hussein who drives a bomb-packed car into the middle of a U.S. military
check point with the intention of blowing himself up along with the
soldiers could be viewed as a terrorist by Americans and as a patriot by
some Iraqis.

A news organization trying to be neutral would probably prefer to call the
driver a ''resistance fighter'' or, more simply, ''an Iraqi bomber,''
thereby shunning the semantics of either side.

But this can lead to extremes and into needless verbal contortions. Take
that terrorism-free Reuters account of the restaurant bombing as an example
(unfortunately not an uncommon one).

What was the purpose of the woman's act if not to strike terror into
Israelis? Why would she be willing to kill herself and innocent children if
not in an attempt to alter the power equation in that region?

Webster's definition of terrorism is, ''The systematic use of terror as a
means of coercion.'' Had someone had the chance to interview the bomber
prior to her entering the restaurant, I doubt she'd disagree with that
definition as a description of her motive.

On the other hand, Webster defines militant as someone who is ''engaged in
warfare or conflict.'' That definition can be deemed as accurate only from
the extremist Palestinian point of view where attacks against Israeli
civilians are justified as a fight for freedom. By any logic, militants
engaged in warfare don't blow up little babies.

HERALD POLICY

It's Herald policy to use the most neutral language available in a given
situation. We, too, label those who fight for a cause as militants. But
unlike some of our colleagues, we see a line where a militant becomes a
terrorist and we don't shy away from the latter word. When a suicide bomber
blows up a bus carrying innocent civilians, it's an act of terrorism, not
militancy.

Does this mean that we've taken the Israeli side in the war of words?
Hardly. When Israeli soldiers track down and kill a Palestinian leader, The
Herald is likely to characterize the action as an assassination, just as
the Palestinians do. The Israeli government favors the term ``targeted
killing.''

Again, what matters is that the words fit the action, not a particular side.

Satirist Lewis Carroll cut to the heart of this in conjuring this exchange
between Humpty Dumpty and Alice (of Wonderland fame).

''When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more
nor less,'' said Humpty.

Answered Alice: ``The question is, whether you can make words mean so many
different things.''

Retorted Humpty: ``The question is, which is to be master, that's all.''