Chapter 3 Several participants thought it impractical to tell the audience what the definition is and said that “if you are consistent, it will come across anyhow.” Others, including Mosher and Camille Elhassani, deputy program editor of Al Jazeera International, disagreed. They said that if you define a term, you have to share with your readers, listeners or viewers what the definition is, why you chose it, and how you will be using it in your newspaper or broadcast report. The media outlet’s Web site, they pointed out, is a perfect place to do that. Explaining the decision to the audience “certainly helps your credibility,” Mosher said. “The more you can make the public aware of the fact that these debates go on, to the extent that they do, I think the better.” The more difficult – and unresolved – question among the working group was whether states can commit terrorist acts. To be specific: A Palestinian who blows himself up in a Tel Aviv shopping center, killing and maiming several Israelis, is often called a terrorist. But what about an Israeli soldier who, with the backing of his government, shells a West Bank residential area, killing and maiming Palestinian civilians? (Each of the two could claim that he is retaliating against the other’s acts.) Hisham Melhem, one of the conference’s co-moderators, does include state actors in his own definition of terrorism: “A deliberate act of violence or a serious threat of violence directed at civilian targets, by 38 FIGHTING WORDS
states and non-state actors to achieve a political objective, even if the political objective is ambiguous or outlandish.” Lawrence Pintak, a former CBS Middle East correspondent who now runs the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at The American University in Cairo, says in his book “Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam & the War of Ideas,” that “the failure to leave space for the idea that some acts carried out by governments can be considered terrorism embodies the very essence of the difference in worldviews. To much of the globe, state-sponsored terrorism is a far greater threat than terrorism carried out by individuals or loose-knit organizations. … This difference in definition sparks a cascade of other questions: Who is a ‘terrorist’ and who is a ‘martyr’? When does a ‘martyr’ become a ‘terrorist’?”2 No matter what definition is used by a media outlet, someone in its audience will disagree. So using the words “terrorism/ terrorist” should not be a substitute for describing facts. Wingspread participants agreed that journalists should not hang their story on the use of the term or make the term the pivotal information they try to convey. The facts are always going to be more useful than the labels. Mosher believes that any definition of the term should deal with the act of terrorism, and not with who is a terrorist. Another term that involves the “T” word and has been in heavy use particularly since 9/11 is the phrase “war on terror-