Why BBC doesn't call Hamas militants 'terrorists' - John Simpson
Watch the 3 minute interview
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67083432
11 October 2023
Government ministers, newspaper columnists, ordinary people - they're all asking why the BBC doesn't say the Hamas gunmen who carried out appalling atrocities in southern Israel are terrorists.
The answer goes right back to the BBC's founding principles.
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.
And it's always been like this in the BBC. During World War Two, BBC broadcasters were expressly told not to call the Nazis evil or wicked, even though we could and did call them "the enemy".