By Brian Montopoli
President Bush, we now well know, is drawn to dramatic phrases designed to stir emotions rather than concrete statements that convey a specific meaning. When Bush says something like “freedom is on the march,” Americans have some vague sense of what he means, but as a factual statement, “freedom is on the march” is a non-starter, a concept magically granted agency. (Logically, it’s akin to asserting something like “jealousy is eating a Big Mac.”)
Of course, sweeping, logically suspect statements serve a purpose for politicians, for whom it may well be more important to inspire than to elucidate. Journalists have a contradictory mandate — their goal should be to use clear, forthright language to evenhandedly convey important information. Thus while “freedom is on the march” may be a great phase for a president, it’s an inexcusable one for a reporter. (Not to mention the fact that one citizen’s freedom is another’s horror — as partisans on both sides of the abortion, gay marriage and gun ownership debates can attest.)
Which brings us to the word “terrorist” and its variants, most notably “terrorism.” The president likes to invoke “terrorists” dramatically, in reference to people who “hate freedom,” people who are members of “shadowy groups.” He uses the word as a vessel for emotional response. Journalists, by contrast, need the word to have a logical foundation, so that when a news consumer reads or hears it, he or she can make some sense of it.
And therein lies the problem, largely because “terrorist” and “terrorism” are words that lack a meaningful specific definition. We’d define a terrorist as one who, with malice aforethought, launches attacks on civilians or noncombatants out of political motivation. But that’s just one characterization, and it’s a loose one at that. According to the U.S. State Department’s 2001 annual review of global terrorism, terrorism is “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant* targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.” (The asterisk, in case you’re wondering, is used to point out that both civilians and unarmed or off-duty military personnel are considered noncombatants.) That’s a nice effort, but it’s far from definitive: the dictionary definitions of the word we reviewed are similar to both ours and the State Department’s, but they all differ in small but crucial ways.
So what’s a journalist to do? If you try to operate from just one definition of terrorism, after all, you’re likely to run into problems. Consider the question of “noncombatants,” which appears both in our and State’s definitions. “Combatant,” like terrorism, is a word whose definition depends largely on one’s perspective. The radical Ward Churchill, a University of Colorado professor, believes that those who died in the World Trade Center conflagration were, to some degree, combatants, in that they endorsed, passively or actively, an aggressive U.S. foreign policy. How Churchill imagines to know the personal politics of each of the nearly 3,000 who perished in that tragedy is a matter best left for him to wrestle with himself. Nonetheless, if you buy into Churchill’s definition, it does invalidate the attackers’ status as terrorists. (And perhaps just to show how confused the issue has become, Churchill also characterized those trying to silence him as engaging in “terrorist” speech.)
Churchill may be far outside the mainstream, but that doesn’t change the fact that the issue of what constitutes a combatant is up for debate. The State Department can’t even settle it; in the review mentioned above, it classified the USS Cole bombing, which killed 17 American sailors, as terrorism, even though by its own definition that attack appears to be an act of war — or, at the very least, an attack on a combatant. (Kudos to The Guardian‘s Brian Whitaker for pointing this out.) So how does State explain that categorization? With fine print: “We also consider as acts of terrorism attacks on military installations or on armed military personnel when a state of military hostilities does not exist at the site, such as bombings against U.S. bases.”
The State Department’s fluid definition is just one illustration of the problem. There are all sorts of other issues: Can there be terrorist speech, as Ward Churchill apparently believes, without terrorist action? Should “state-sponsored terrorism” be considered not terrorism but a form of warfare? Must a “terrorist” be in contact with a network of like-minded individuals, or can he or she be ideologically independent? Can we always pinpoint motivation well enough to fit it into a rigid definition?
Just consider who or what has been labeled terrorist in recent weeks. Bill O’Reilly, speaking of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “I think they’re a terrorist group. They’re terrorizing me and my family. They’re terrorizing me. I think they’re terrorists.” That ludicrous characterization aside, O’Reilly and other talking heads are prone to referring to “terrorists” as though they’re a monolithic entity, a “global network,” as President Bush put it, as though terrorists in Spain and terrorists in Chechnya have the same motivation, ideology and characteristics.
On the domestic front, there is now debate over whether those who killed the husband and mother of U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow, who had been targeted by white supremacists, should be considered terrorists. Reacting to a story in which the alleged murderers are called “white nationalists,” the Blue Collar blog noted that “White terrorists who massacre Americans are [called] ‘Nationalists,’” while “Dark skin Arabs who massacre Americans are [called] ‘Terrorists.’” And the press has shown a propensity to label foreigners “terrorists” more quickly than they are to label Americans, like Ted Kaczynski or Timothy McVeigh, as such — despite the fact that most definitions of terrorism do not make a distinction.
Then there’s the semantic question of who is an “insurgent” and who is a “terrorist,” which has turned into a partisan debate as much as it is a definitional one. After a man caught trying to plant explosives under civilian vehicles was labeled a “suspected insurgent” in a Reuters caption, Michael Totten wrote, “If this guy was caught planting explosives under civilian vehicles, he is not an insurgent. He is a terrorist. Good God, will Reuters never figure this out?” (James Joyner has a good rundown of objections to the “inaccurate and propagandistic” use of the word “insurgent” by the media as it applies to Iraq.) Steven L. Taylor lays out one such argument: While Marxist rebels in Latin America, he writes, were fighting in defense of social justice and should thus be considered insurgents, violent Iraqis, with their “perverse view of the afterlife” which leaves them with little interest in an earthly utopia (and results in their targeting of civilians), should be deemed terrorists.
That argument, of course, lumps all those who have committed violence in Iraq into the same category, when there are in fact significant differences — some of the perpetrators are Iraqis, some aren’t, some target the military, some don’t. If an insurgent is someone who attacks a government authority in his or her own country (and, admittedly, there is some debate about this definition), then the various attacks in Iraq have sometimes been the work of insurgents, and sometimes the work of terrorists.
Reporters often fail to make such a distinction, partly because they don’t have sufficient information, partly because of time and space constraints, and partly because of apathy. Instead, ideology often trumps accuracy. Turn on Fox News, and you’re likely far more likely to hear the word “terrorist” than “insurgent” — in the past month, according to a LexisNexis search, “terrorist” has been uttered nearly four and a half times as often as “insurgent” on that network. On CNN, meanwhile, the numbers are much closer — “terrorist” comes up just one and a half times as often as “insurgent.”
That comparison reflects a fundamental failure by reporters to define the terms that they’re ostensibly using to edify viewers. That’s not easy, particularly with politicians and talking heads both so ready to dilute their meaning — remember Education Secretary Rod Paige’s characterization of the National Education Association as a “terrorist organization”?
But reporters ultimately have a responsibility to overcome these obstacles, not brainlessly follow the lead of politicians or partisans whose goals are to convert, not to inform. So while we won’t go so far as to call for a complete moratorium on the words “terrorist” and “terrorism” by reporters, there clearly needs to be much more vigilance on the part of the press in monitoring how they’re used. As Bob Kerrey, Richard Clarke, and Maureen Dowd have all pointed out, the notion of a “war on terror” is absurd, since terror is a tactic, not a nation or a movement. Yet the press continues to use the phrase unquestioningly.
As long as reporters and editors can’t resist the urge to adopt terms that are used by politicians to obfuscate instead of to clarify, they can hardly expect to win back the trust of an increasingly skeptical audience.
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.