09/17/2004: "Better watch that "terrorist" talk"

This is the kind of story that helps to clarify why many people in the West have a hard time taking the claims of at least some Muslims to disavow terrorism seriously:

The National Council on Canada-Arab Relations (NCCAR) and the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) are calling on the Ontario Press Council to investigate the troubling practice of biased reporting against Muslims and Arabs in CanWest publications.

In a radio report aired this morning on CBC Radio Ottawa, journalist Evan Dyer reported on how CanWest publications have been altering words and phrases and inserting biased qualifiers in wire copy stories dealing with the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is one example:

In one Reuters story, the original copy reads: "...the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which has been involved in a four-year-old revolt against Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank."

In the National Post version, printed Tuesday, it became: "...the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a terrorist group that has been involved in a four-year-old campaign of violence against Israel."

"This is another troubling example of clear bias by CanWest publications like the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen in applying different standards towards Arabs and Muslims when reporting," said NCCAR Executive Director Mazen Chouaib.

"We have complained repeatedly that there is a perceived anti-Arab agenda with these publications and we hope that this will force them to change their methods and expose to Canadians the validity of our point of view."

Reuters, of course, is one of those news organizations that eschews the use of the word "terrorist" because, as the old saying goes, "one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter." The rest of us consider people who deliberately blow up children, as the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade has proudly done on many occasions, to embody the definition of a terrorist. As the general manager of the al-Arabiya television station recently wrote, "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims." If organizations like NCCAR and CAF don't like that, the answer isn't to shoot the messenger, it's to change the "message of hate" that Abdel Rahman al-Rashed rightly laments.

UPDATE: Forgot to give credit (to Damian Penny for the link) where credit is due.