Four words which sum up the BBC

If the word 'terrorist' is good enough for a despot like Assad, it's good enough for the BBC.

By JEREMY BRIER
Airstrike in Syria 300 (photo credit: Courtesy of Facebook)
Airstrike in Syria 300
(photo credit: Courtesy of Facebook)
On May 5 2013, the BBC website led with the headline “Israel strikes ‘backing terrorists’”.  This was a powerful and remarkable statement of Israel’s intentions and actions, conveying both Israel’s support for terrorists and using military might to do so. Such behaviour would, needless to say, be utterly disgraceful and worthy of the most virulent international scorn. Indeed, this was undoubtedly the intention of Syrian President Bashar al Assad when he signed off the press release making such an assertion. The pertinent question for British license-fee payers is: why is the state broadcaster taking a mass murderer at his word and why is it emphasizing his propaganda like this? 
It is highly instructive to notice what the headline did not say. It did not say “Israel strikes chemical weapons depot.” That would have been a clear statement of verifiable fact and may have been the obvious candidate for an objective news organisation. It did not even say “Israel strikes ‘chemical weapons depot’, thus injecting slight caution into Israel’s claims but nevertheless giving prominence to what, in fact, happened on the evidence. No, there was no pretense at reporting events; the “impartial” BBC chose to emphasize an opinion.
Having decided to go with opinion rather than fact, the BBC still had the opportunity to genuflect towards fairness. It could have stated: “Israel criticized over military strike”, at least a statement arguably grounded in truth given that there was criticism of Israel (albeit from many unpalatable quarters). However, the BBC chose to go further and give prominence to a line which suggested not the fact of the strike, or even controversy surrounding the strike, but the “terrorists” to whom it was alleged to be beneficial. And the “terrorists” were portrayed not as unwitting beneficiaries but as actively supported by Israel. 
Even in the extraordinary context of this editorial decision, the BBC had one last chance to be quasi-just. It could have headlined its news page: “Assad says Israel strikes ‘backing terrorists’” which, although gives prominence to the outrageous views of a murderous tyrant, at least makes clear from where they emanate. The Assad Propaganda Wing need not have worried: they got their banner quote emblazoned across the BBC website as if it was the quoted conclusion of a detailed and analytical public inquiry.
The overwhelming irony was that the reality was the precise inverse of the headline: Israel was destroying the infrastructure and means of terror, a deadly arsenal of Iranian weapons stored at a massive arms depot near Damascus. Far from backing terrorists, Israel is the world’s greatest destroyer of terrorism. 
But there is a second, subtler irony in all this. The BBC has long since refused to use the word “terrorism” to describe the acts of those who blow up Israelis in pizza shops, nightclubs and bus-stops. Those guys are “militants”. It seems you can only get the BBC to use the T-word when it comes from the mouth of a tyrant.