As the Twitter Files and the Missouri v. Biden free speech case showed, “fact-checkers” working for social media companies labeled content that was true but disfavored by the government as “misinformation,” or censored it outright. This has been an area of great concern to a number of independent journalists, with Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger reporting on the
“More broadly, this semantic preference of the legacy media illustrates why X (formerly known as Twitter) is so important. Whether you agree with the use of “terrorists” or not, a social media platform that allows for unfiltered information enables citizens to see the world through many lenses, rather than through the frame—and, indeed, it generally is one frame by nearly all the legacy media outlets—created by a small clique of editors and journalists. “
"Attackers" is a less emotional word than terrorists, and in the immediate circumstance is a very accurate term. My pre-2000 copy of Webster's says a militant is one who is "fighting" or is "ready to fight, esp. for some cause."
“More broadly, this semantic preference of the legacy media illustrates why X (formerly known as Twitter) is so important. Whether you agree with the use of “terrorists” or not, a social media platform that allows for unfiltered information enables citizens to see the world through many lenses, rather than through the frame—and, indeed, it generally is one frame by nearly all the legacy media outlets—created by a small clique of editors and journalists. “
that’s it. thank you David!
"Attackers" is a less emotional word than terrorists, and in the immediate circumstance is a very accurate term. My pre-2000 copy of Webster's says a militant is one who is "fighting" or is "ready to fight, esp. for some cause."
Media is going out of the way to slice and dice a commentators quote to avoid using the word "terrorist". These are terrorists.
Call the terrorists anything you like, but anyone who murders civilians, rapes and mutilates women and kidnaps children is a terrorist.
This WS Journal article on Israelis taken hostage by Hamas, https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israels-hostage-crisis-execution-threat-9f2c0191?st=50k49cu4s6lvpox&reflink=share_mobilewebshare, refers to "Palestinian militants" and "a weekend assault," and notes in passing that Hamas "has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union."
Thanks for pointing out PBS's clever parsing of the Israeli's quote. I would never have guessed that they had done this.
These past several years have really opened my eyes to what is being said, and not said, by the media and the government.
Which is why I read you and others on substack.
There should be different words for "vaccines" that give strong & long-lasting protection, vs. annual prophylactics like flu and mRNA shots.
The WS Journal editors have clearly decided that "militants" is the one word to be used. This article, https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/at-kibbutz-where-hamas-killed-dozens-israeli-troops-gather-to-respond-40f9c3f8?mod=world_lead_pos5, says "militants" 19 times, "attack" 9 times, but "attackers" or "terrorists" 0 times.
As you might guess, the BBC labels Hamas militants, not terrorists.