Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Hypocrisy, thy name is Reuters

In the immortal words of Reuters global news editor, Steven Jukes:
We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist.
This is certainly the case when Israelis are blown up by Palestinian suicide bombers and Reuters correspondents routinely censor any use of the "T"-word in their stories, even when Israeli spokespeople specifically use the term.

Not so however, when innocents in other countries are murdered by terr*rists.  In a story about the suicide bombing in Russia Monday that killed 35 people entitled, "Putin vows revenge for suicide bombing", Reuters correspondents use variants of terrorist at least three times, all absent scare quotes:
President Dmitry Medvedev criticized law enforcement agencies and airport managers over the attack at the international arrivals hall at Domodedovo, a major international gateway to Russia, which killed at least eight foreigners.
"Everything must be done to find, expose and bring the bandits who committed this crime to court -- and the nests of these bandits, however deep they have dug in, must be liquidated," he told Federal Security Service (FSB) leaders, who are in charge of coordinating Russia's fight against terrorism...
U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to Medvedev on the phone, expressing condolences and "his strong condemnation of this outrageous attack on innocent civilians," the White House said. Obama also pledged to work with Russia to combat terrorism...
"Terrorism remains the main threat to the security of our state, the main threat to Russia, to all our citizens," Medvedev said. He said terrorist attacks increased last year, calling it "the most serious signal" for law enforcement.
Note that none of the three references are direct quotes; Reuters is doing the speaking.

Apparently for Reuters, those that murder Russians, Britons, Germans, Bulgarians, Kyrgyzstanis, Tajikistanis, Uzbekistanis or Ukrainians are terrorists, whereas those that murder Jews are freedom fighters.

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