The Guardian gave op-ed space to the head of BBC Television News, who discusses covering last week’s London bombings. At the very end, Roger Mosey addresses the way the network handled the word “terror.”
Then there has been a controversy about our use of language – particularly the question of whether the BBC banned the word “terrorist”. There is no ban. It’s true the word is contentious in some contexts on our international services, hence the recommendation that it be employed with care. But we have used and will continue to use the words terror, terrorism and terrorist – as we did in all our flagship bulletins from Thursday.
But Mosey contradicts BBC guidelines, and he fails to answer specific criticisms detailed here and here.
