The War on Words Turns Full Circle

Philip M. Stone November 1, 2004

The war of words within the news and entertainment business has just reached a new frightening level. No longer is it just about naming attackers as “terrorists,” or whether to refer to Iraq as an “occupation,” but now a television soap opera produced in the Middle East has been pulled because an unknown Islamic “group” has threatened violence to all who participate.

News agencies have longed struggled with the word “terrorist.”  The basic news agency rule is not to use the label. But what to do if a client inserts the word, and leaves the byline and news agency credit on the story?  CanWest, Canada’s largest newspaper chain, has started doing exactly that and Reuters has asked it to stop, or if it continues to remove the journalists byline.

The Associated Press also objected when a CanWest newspaper, the Ottawa Citizen, added the word “terrorist” seven times in an AP story from Iraq.  But in that case the newspaper apologized, not because it shouldn’t add the word, but rather because it was wrong to do so in that particular case.  “The changes to the AP story do not reflect Citizen policy which is to use the term 'terrorist' to describe someone who deliberately targets civilians. As such, the changes to the AP story were made in error.”

It’s what keeps news agencies editors awake at night. In serving a global audience your goal is to simply provide the facts, accurately and impartially, and then let the reader make up his mind based on those facts. In other words if there is a label to apply, let the reader apply it. But it goes deeper than that.

All news agencies are flooded daily with emails from around the world objecting to various stories, particularly stories about the Middle East where it is very true that one man’s hero could very well be another man’s terrorist. And in that part of the world objections are not just verbal, they can become violent.

News agency journalists can be at risk when their client editors add their own bias to stories, sometimes by adding labels. It explains why, apart from the journalistic integrity of the original reporter’s story, a news agency would want the byline gone from a story in which a client makes a lot of changes thaty could affect the impartiality of the story.

Scott Anderson, editor-in-chief of CanWest Publications, does not accept that reasoning, “If you are couching language to protect people, are you telling the truth?”  he asked. Three years earlier, just after 9/11, William Safire in the New York Times wrote, “The most precise word to describe a person or group who murders even one innocent civilian to send a political message is terrorist.”

The fear factor is very real, as Arab TV stations have been quick to confirm.  Several Arab TV stations have dropped one of the new season’s most anticipated soap operas because an unknown Islamic group has threatened harm to all those who participate in the show and those who televise it.

The 30-episode EUR 3 million Arab-produced soap opera, The Road to Kabul, told the story of an Afghan woman and an Arab man who met in England and then moved to Kabul during the Taliban reign where the Taliban forced her to wear a burqua and stopped her from working.

“We swear to the great God that if we see in the series anything other than the honorable reality of the Taliban …we will assault all those who participated in this sullied malice,” the Mujahedin Brigades of Iraq and Syria wrote on a web site.

Some Arab stations canceled the series before it even began, but two Saudi owned stations aired eight episodes, but then did not receive any more. They are now suing the producers. The eight episodes had not yet gotten to the part where the couple returned to Kabul under Taliban control.

And then there is al-Jazeera, perhaps the most famous of the Arab 24-hour all news channels that often has the first reports from the non-coalition side on what is happening in Iraq. It has started an English language web site and has decided it must choose its words more carefully for a mainly non-Arab audience.

Gone, since the interim government took power in Iraq, is the word “occupation” to describe the coalition forces in Iraq. Gone also is the word “resistance” to describe the fight against coalition forces. Those decisions allegedly caused much infighting within the organization

An al-Jazeera spokesman summed it up, “We want to be as objective as possible.”