If you don’t believe it, don’t print it
A Reuters “story“:
China says foils ‘terrorist’ plot to kidnap Olympians — Chinese authorities have detained 45 East Turkestan “terrorist” suspects, and foiled plots to carry out suicide bomb attacks and kidnap athletes to disrupt the Beijing Olympics, a police spokesman said on Thursday. Uighur militants have been agitating to establish an independent East Turkestan in China’s predominantly Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang bordering Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Chinese authorities cracked two “terrorist” groups, one of which belonged to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Ministry of Public Security spokesman Wu Heping told a news conference in Beijing. ETIM was listed by the United Nations as a terrorist group in 2002 and has links to Al Qaeda. The group asked its members to do trial runs using poisoned meat, poison gas and remote control explosive devices, Wu said.
Their aim was “to create an international incident with the goal of disrupting the Olympic Games”, the spokesman said. The first group, led by Aji Muhammat, bought explosive materials and carried out 13 test explosions, Wu said without giving the nationality of the ringleader. Suspects in custody confessed they were ordered to commit suicide when arrested, he said. Police detained 10 suspects and seized 16,000 yuan ($2,300) in cash and a large quantity of “Holy War” training materials, Wu said.
We understand all the problems with China’s authoritarian government. Having said that, if you don’t believe in the story about a “terrorist” plot to wage some kind of “Holy War,” then don’t print the story. Reuters should at least be very clear about what quotation marks mean in a “news” story, so that its readers can properly interpret their imprecise intent.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:29 am
I thought Reuter’s had decided that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” and had dropped usage of the term entirely.
Or are some animals more equal than other animals, and so communist dictatorships get to have “terrorists” while the rest of us are stuck with “insurgents”?
I guess the only terrorists (with no quotes) would be the ones that blow themselves up within the Reuter’s management offices.