CANADIAN CBC: "ATTACK" YES, "TERRORIST" NO
by George Jonas
Benador Associates
July 21, 2005

Talk about coincidence. Just as I started writing this column,
someone on CBC-TV called this month's bombing of the London public
transport system "a terrorist attack." By the time I shifted my glance from
the computer to the television screen, the station cut to a commercial, so
I can't identify the offender.#

If he was an employee, he took a chance. An internal memo warns
that calling terrorist attacks "terrorist attacks" is against CBC policy.#

The word should be "attack," pure and simple, or rather neither
simple nor pure, but Pharisaically correct. Contemporary disciples of the
ancient Pharisee sect ­ whose name has become a synonym for self-righteous
hypocrisy ­ have long infested public broadcasters such as the CBC and the
BBC. Now they're proclaiming that reporters should use only "neutral
language." Describing terrorist attacks as plain-vanilla "attacks," say the
latter-day Pharisees, permits viewers and listeners "to form their own
conclusions" about just what kind of attacks they were.#

Needless to say, the CBC's reluctance to influence the audience's
deliberations doesn't extend to all issues. The same news organizations
that won't call terrorists terrorists ­ CBC, BBC, Reuters, and others of
their ilk ­ have no qualms about tainting the audience's opinion in
relation to things that seem morally clear to them. The CBC doesn't insist
that reporters describe a company's act of dumping toxic waste in "neutral
language" and leave the word "pollution" to the viewers. Nor does Mother
Corp demand attribution for such as emotionally loaded word as "murder."
CBC reporters can say: "A witness described the murder" rather than: "A
witness described the accused throttling the victim in an act the police
characterized as 'murder.'" They can say: "A man was charged with molesting
a child" rather than: "After a child was fondled, a crown attorney called a
man a "child molester.'"#

But reporters can't call a suicide bomber blowing up a London bus a
terrorist attack. Let viewers "make their own judgment" about what to call
it. The CBC won't make judgments for them. Perish the thought. We tell
people what happened; we don't tell them what to think. We're pure as the
driven snow.#

Such concern for purity is unnecessary, of course, when it comes to
self-evident evils like pollution. It's reserved for acts about which CBC
bosses feel ambivalent themselves, such as Arab/Muslim terrorists blowing
up commuter trains or flying airliners into skyscrapers. The CBC's top
brass seems to regard such acts as morally ambiguous, as "controversial,"
as being below the threshold of society's moral consensus, as acts about
which opinions are divided.#

This may come as a surprise to Canadians who think there's
considerable moral consensus about blowing up bus or subway riders. Most
people believe (to put it mildly) that it's wrong. Most people also think
that if news of this consensus hasn't yet reached the CBC, it's the public
broadcaster that's out of society's moral loop.#

There's nothing more distasteful than the sight of cowardice,
intellectual muddle, and a fascination with violence masquerading as
journalistic objectivity. There's nothing more ridiculous than the confused
belief that the moral high ground lies in some no-man's land between good
and evil. It's unnecessary to decide whether this moral confusion is
combined with a hidden political agenda. While it's possible that some news
organizations have been infiltrated by agents or supporters of al-Qaeda or
Islamofascsim, I'd hesitate to ascribe to malice anything that can be
explained by stupidity.#

Some well-meaning members of the chattering classes open their
minds so wide (as the saying goes) that their brains fall out. They
persuade themselves that it's narrow-minded prejudice to call Dracula a
vampire: Just describe what he does and let the readers or viewers decide
what he is. But a refusal to call something by its proper and customary
name is inaccurate reporting no less than it would be to attach a false,
arbitrary or tendentious label to something. If it walks like a duck and
quacks like a duck it's likely to be a duck ­ and not calling a duck a duck
makes it a canard.#

Not calling terrorism terrorism is a canard (the French word
meaning duck as well as false news.) I think the CBC's deliberate practice
of canard-journalism is a disgrace. My old employer (I spent 23 years on
CBC staff) would do better to emulate Arab and Muslim commentators, like
Abdel Rahman al-Rashed on Al-Arabiya, who have since the London bombings
come out to call and condemn terrorists as terrorists.

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