Even CBS Isn't This Bad

The Jerusalem Post notes that the BBC had a brief conversion to reality last week. Too bad the political correctness pills kicked back in...

In marked contrast to BBC reports about bombs on public transport in Israel – bombs which in some cases were even worse than those in London since some were specifically aimed at children and most were packed with nails, screws, glass and specially-sharpened metal shards in order to maximize injuries – terms like "guerrilla," "militant," "activist" or "fighter" were suddenly nowhere to be seen.

Nor – again in contrast to their coverage of Israel – did BBC correspondents, on either its domestic or international services, provide sympathetic accounts of the likely perpetrators, or explain to viewers that we must "understand" their "grievances." Instead they did what an objective news organization should do: just report on the attacks, and their atrocious nature, and on the sufferings of the victims.

The world's premier broadcast network appeared to throw away its own ridiculous "BBC Producer's Guidelines." BBC online reports, for example, had headlines such as "Terror of passengers stuck on tube" and "London Rocked by Terror Attacks."

BBC executives had previously insisted that for the sake of what they call "evenhandedness" terrorists should not be called terrorists. Their Guidelines state: "The word 'terrorist' itself can be a barrier to understanding... We should try to avoid the term, while we report the facts as we know them."

BUT THE hope of many of the British taxpayers forced to fund the BBC that it had finally come to its senses and would henceforth call terror by its proper name turned out to be short-lived. By Friday, the BBC's World Service was slowly reverting to its old habits, both on air and on line. (Its domestic news broadcasts have for the time being continued using the word "terrorist.")

Presumably hoping that no one would notice, the BBC subtly and retroactively altered its initial texts about the bombs on both its British and international Web sites. Unfortunately for the BBC, however, previous versions of its webpages remained easily accessible to all on Google, and enterprising British bloggers, long-fed up with the BBC's bias, recorded the changes.

(hat tip: Instapundit) This would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. The inability of leftist to call someone a terrorist when they're indiscriminently killing innocents in pursuit of a religious or political ideal reflects the same stupidity that infected the liberals who consistenly refused to recognize the evils of Communism during the Cold War. I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

The editing of the web pages is the worst part -- they recognize reality briefly when it smacks them in the face, but then opt to return to their little preconceived model of how the world should be. The enabling of criminals was a hobby for years -- now they like to enable terrorists. There's a reason no trusts the Left to fight the War on Terror -- they don't think there's a war, and they don't think there's terror.