The BBC announced Friday it will no longer refer to Hamas as “militants,” following backlash over the broadcaster’s language choices in the aftermath of the terrorists' brutal Oct. 7 attack against Israel.
The decision comes after a meeting between the Board of Deputies of British Jews and BBC Director General Tim Davie, along with senior staffers.
“The BBC confirmed it was committed to continued dialogue. It also confirmed it is no longer BBC practice to call Hamas militants,” BBC said in a press release. “Instead, the BBC describes the group as a proscribed terrorist organisation by the UK government and others, or simply as Hamas.”
Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl said they emphasized during the meeting "our outrage at the refusal of the BBC to describe Hamas’ barbaric actions as terrorism and the damaging, false report of the rocket which killed innocent civilians. We will both continue dialogue as well as pursuing legal avenues.”
In a piece published earlier this month, BBC World Affairs editor John Simpson explained why the broadcaster wasn’t referring to Hamas as “terrorists.”
Terrorism is a loaded word, which people use about an outfit they disapprove of morally. It's simply not the BBC's job to tell people who to support and who to condemn - who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.
We regularly point out that the British and other governments have condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation, but that's their business. We also run interviews with guests and quote contributors who describe Hamas as terrorists.
The key point is that we don't say it in our voice. Our business is to present our audiences with the facts, and let them make up their own minds. […]
During the 50 years I've been reporting on events in the Middle East, I've seen for myself the aftermath of attacks like this one in Israel, and I've also seen the aftermath of Israeli bomb and artillery attacks on civilian targets in Lebanon and Gaza. The horror of things like that stay in your mind forever.
But this doesn't mean that we should start saying that the organisation whose supporters have carried them out is a terrorist organisation, because that would mean we were abandoning our duty to stay objective. (BBC)
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But as Member of Parliament Jacob Rees-Mogg pointed out, BBC had no problem in the past referring to atrocities committed in various European countries as terrorism.
The BBC has lost its way and we are forced to pay for it. https://t.co/DZAJnaxqLx
— Jacob Rees-Mogg (@Jacob_Rees_Mogg) October 20, 2023
"The BBC are losing people because they aren't behaving in a way that meets the majority of viewers' expectations of them," a member of Parliament commented in a report by The Sunday Times. "Not to describe Hamas's actions as a terrorist attack was pretty pathetic and that has undermined so much of what has followed."
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