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BBC resists labeling of the Sept. 11 attacks `terrorism'

The BBC World Service has taken a policy decision not to describe the attacks on the US as "terrorism."

Mark Damazer, the BBC's deputy director of news, said the service would lose its reputation for impartiality around the world if it were seen to use such a subjective term.

While guests and contributors to World Service programs may describe the deliberate flying of jet planes into the World Trade Center as acts of terror, news correspondents use more neutral terms such as "attack."

Damazer, speaking in a debate about television coverage of Sept. 11 at the Newsworld conference in Barcelona, insisted the decision was not intended to downgrade the horror of the event. But if the word terrorism was used there would be implications for the description of more subjective acts of terror such as those carried out by Hamas in the Middle East or ETA in Spain.

He said of the attack on the US: "However appalling and disgusting it was, there will nevertheless be a constituency of your listeners who don't regard it as terrorism. Describing it as such could downgrade your status as an impartial and independent broadcaster."

US networks came in for particular criticism. Tony Burman, executive director at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, said the US coverage of the crisis had failed to take account of the international perspective: "It's depressing to see the jingoism which is lamentably part of the culture and spirit of the coverage." He said US networks regarded the attacks on Afghanistan as a football match with Washington as the home team.

Comparing BBC World coverage of the war with that of the US networks, he said they appeared to describe "two different wars."

Bill Wheatley, the vice president of NBC, in a satellite link from New York, rejected the charge of jingoism, but said: "It's true that US networks are focusing on the attempt to defeat the Taliban and apprehend Osama Bin Laden, but I don't think we've been pulling punches in terms of the difficulties of the war effort and the problems of US foreign policy."
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