2023-10-12 09:48:00
Government ministers, columnists, ordinary people – they all ask why BBC does not say that the Hamas gunmen who committed horrific atrocities in southern Israel are terrorists.
The answer goes back to the BBC’s founding principles, says the UK media’s world news editor John Simpson.
Terrorism is a loaded word that people use for something they morally disapprove of. It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn – who are good and who are bad.
We regularly point out that the British and other governments have condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation, but that is their job. We also interview guests and quote contributors who describe Hamas as terrorists.
The key point is that we don’t say it with our voice. Our job is to present our audience with the facts and let them make up their own minds.
Any sane person would be horrified by what we saw. It is perfectly reasonable to call the incidents that occurred “atrocities” because that is exactly what they are.
No one can defend the killing of civilians, especially children and even babies – nor attacks on innocent, peaceful people attending a music festival.
In the 50 years I’ve been reporting on events in the Middle East, I’ve seen firsthand the effects of attacks like the one in Israel, and I’ve also seen the effects of Israeli bombing and artillery attacks on civilian targets in Lebanon and Gaza. The horror of such things remains in your mind forever.
But that doesn’t mean we should start saying that the organization whose supporters committed them is a terrorist organization, because that would mean abandoning our duty to remain objective.
And it has always been that way at the BBC. During WWII BBC broadcasters were specifically told not to call the Nazis evil or wicked, although we could and did call them ‘the enemy’.
“Above all,” says a BBC document on all this, “there should be no room for speech.” Our tone had to be calm and collected.
It was difficult to maintain this principle when the IRA was bombing Britain and killing innocent civilians, but we did it. There was huge pressure from Margaret Thatcher’s government on the BBC and on individual reporters like myself for this – especially after the (against Thatcher) bombing in Brighton when she had just escaped death and so many other innocent people had been killed and injured.
But we held the line. And we still do, to this day…
That’s why people in Britain and around the world, in huge numbers, watch, read and listen to what we say every day.
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