As previously noted, the new BBC editorial guidelines – set to come into effect on September 1st – do not include any changes to the corporation’s approach to the “use of language” when reporting terrorism, with the BBC having stated that “it was felt that no further changes were required”.
A recent story shows that even when a person has been convicted and sentenced by not one, but three, different courts of law for acts of terrorism, the BBC will nevertheless shy away from using the term terrorist.
On July 31st the BBC promoted a report by Tom McArthur on social media:
The original version of that report was headlined “Swedish terrorist sentenced over burning alive of Jordanian pilot” and it opened by telling readers that:
“A convicted terrorist has been jailed for life over the brutal killing of a pilot who was burned alive in a cage 10 years ago.
A court in Stockholm handed down the verdict to Osama Krayem, a Swedish national who is already in jail over terror attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016.”
Around an hour later, the BBC News website amended the headline to read “Swedish jihadist jailed for life over IS murder of Jordanian pilot in Syria”. The report’s opening sentences were also rewritten:
“A Swedish man already convicted of carrying out jihadist attacks in Europe has been jailed for life for serious war crimes and terrorist crimes over the brutal killing of a pilot in Syria 10 years ago.
A court in Stockholm handed down the verdict to Osama Krayem, who had been jailed for the Paris and Brussels attacks in 2015 and 2016.”
Later, quotation marks were added around the phrase ‘serious war crimes and terrorist crimes’ – presumably in order to meet the editorial guidelines’ demand for “attribution”. That paragraph currently reads as follows:
“A Swedish man already convicted of carrying out jihadist attacks in Europe has been jailed for life for “serious war crimes and terrorist crimes” over the brutal killing of a pilot in Syria 10 years ago.
A court in Stockholm handed down the verdict to Osama Krayem, who had been jailed for the Paris and Brussels attacks in 2015 and 2016.”
Readers are later told that:
“Krayem, 32, who is already serving a 30-year sentence for his role in the Paris attacks and a life term for the Brussels attacks, was given a second life sentence by the court in Stockholm.”
In 2023 the BBC reported that: [emphasis added]
“A court in Brussels has found six men guilty of terrorist murder, more than seven years after suicide bomb attacks killed 32 people at the city’s airport and a metro station in March 2016. […]
Four other men were found guilty of terrorist murder: Oussama Atar, Osama Krayem, Ali El Haddad Asufi and Bilal El Makhoukhi.”
As readers may recall, the BBC was able to accurately describe both the November 2015 attacks in Paris and the March 2016 attacks in Brussels as terror incidents in some of its reporting at the time and in follow-up coverage.
BBC’S DOUBLE STANDARDS ON TERRORISM HIGHLIGHTED AGAIN
BBC NEWS WEBSITE FLIP-FLOPS ON DESCRIPTION OF BRUSSELS ATTACKS AS TERRORISM – PART ONE
BBC NEWS WEBSITE FLIP-FLOPS ON DESCRIPTION OF BRUSSELS ATTACKS AS TERRORISM – PART TWO
Now we see that a report which originally accurately described a man who was convicted of three separate acts of terrorism by three different European courts has been amended to remove the term ‘terrorist’.
Clearly the BBC’s editorial policies concerning the use of language when reporting terrorism in Israel have now crept their way into reporting from Europe.
