The T-Word


April 13, 2002


BOB GARFIELD: The Minneapolis Star Tribune is getting a lot of attention lately for its Middle East coverage -- not for what it's printing but rather for what it's not printing. A group of Jewish leaders are protesting the paper for its reluctance to refer to Palestinian suicide bombers as "terrorists." The Star Tribune is not alone in this policy. The New York Times, Washington Post and even Associated Press all avoided the T-word when describing a recent bombing in a restaurant in Haifa. This is a marked shift in word usage from before September 11th. The Times, Post and AP had no problem using the words terrorist and terrorism in their coverage of the August 9th Sbarro Pizza Shop bombing in Jerusalem. Joining us now to discuss the swing is Michael Kelly, editor of the Atlantic Monthly and a columnist for the Washington Post. Mike, welcome to On the Media.

MICHAEL KELLY: Thank you very much.

BOB GARFIELD: Well the objectivity argument is that the word terrorist is just too loaded at this stage. Whether journalists are using it less or not, the news makers are using it more and more as a tool of rhetoric. Isn't it possible that the word has become so politicized and so haphazardly detonated, let's say, that it's just lost the clarity and precision that commended its use in the first place?

MICHAEL KELLY: First of all I'd say that it's always been politically loaded, because it expresses what you might call a politically loaded fact. Blowing up civilians is necessarily controversial. But it doesn't seem to me that those of us in the press add anything to clarity or honesty by declining to use the term just because it's loaded, and by substituting terms that we know are imprecise or even dishonest euphemisms.

BOB GARFIELD:All right, but "suicide bombing" does the trick. It's descriptive not of the strategy -- like terrorism is -- but of the act itself.

MICHAEL KELLY: But it still does not go as far in accuracy or in honesty as "terrorist" does because it does not imply motive. Why does a suicide bomber in Palestine blow up a restaurant? Because he believes that by doing so he may force the State of Israel to capitulate in what is a real if unconventional war. That suicide bomber is by any definition a terrorist who's practicing terrorism. What's to be gained by not saying that?

BOB GARFIELD: Let's talk about impact for a minute then.

MICHAEL KELLY: Mm-hm.

BOB GARFIELD:If the idea is not to be taken for pro-Israeli mouthpieces, couldn't the media be correct in judging that for their reports to be taken at all seriously and not to be dismissed as propaganda or one-sided that the sacrifice of the difference between suicide bomber and terrorist is-- you know, a small one to make.

MICHAEL KELLY: I think the argument that you're making i--is probably the argument that news editors make to themselves as a legitimate argument, but I still think it's a fallacy. I'll use an analogy -- the term "fascist." If you were a reporter during the Second World War covering it for an American or British newspaper, you would frequently notice that the spokespeople for your government called the enemy "fascist," and they used it to remind people that this was the enemy. It would still be appropriate for a reporter in that instance to use the term fascist precisely because the term fascist had a real meaning, and in fact was a term that had been defined by the fascists themselves. That's the situation we're in now it seems to me.

BOB GARFIELD: So what would you prescribe?

MICHAEL KELLY:That's a good question. You made me think about - about it as an editor - not as a columnist. I would prescribe a mixed use of "terrorist" and "suicide bombers."

BOB GARFIELD: Well curiously enough this seems to have been the decision that news organizations made right up through September 10th.

MICHAEL KELLY: Uh-huh.

BOB GARFIELD:Then immediately after there was a big upsurge in the invocation of the word "terrorism," and then when the latest, most violent uprising in the occupied territories and in Israel, all of a sudden it went away. Why do you suppose that-- this is such a moving target?

MICHAEL KELLY: Well, news organizations -- these are in fact entities that are very sensitive to all sorts of pressure. There has always been an organized lobbying campaign on all sides of that issue over matters of terminology, and after September 11th you did not see a great deal of pressure on American news organizations to resist the use of the word "terrorist." So now, as opposed to the coverage of September 11th, news organizations in describing exactly the same activity, face a different political reality which is that they are under much more pressure.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, Michael Kelly, thank you very much.

MICHAEL KELLY: It was my pleasure.

BOB GARFIELD: Mike Kelly is the editor of Atlantic Monthly and a columnist for the Washington Post. [MUSIC]