Here is the opening paragraph of the Yahoo! story about the murder of Ezzedine Salim:
US President George W. Bush branded as "terrorism" the death of the head of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Ezzedine Salim, in a lethal Baghdad car bomb suicide attack.The scare quotes are theirs...why? If it was meant simply as a quote you wouldn't enclose only that one word. Are we really at the point that we can't call terrorists by their proper names? Are they worried the suicide bomber might sue them for slander?
There are many appropriate labels that don't require scare quotes;
murderers, terrorists, psychotics.....
And labels that do;
"insurgents", "dissenters", "protestors"......
if the word wasn't in quotes, yahoo or whoever they got the news from could be accused as editorializing.
Posted by: friend at May 17, 2004 11:01 PMplus afp is an international news agency and has to write their stories for a variety of different outlets. they can't show favoritism like a foxnews or cnn or, to a point, the ap.
Posted by: friend at May 17, 2004 11:03 PM