As has been previously noted here, the BBC has in the past consistently referred to Hizballah as a “militant group”, despite its known involvement in terrorism.
In its report of February 12th entitled “Bulgaria gives Burgas bomb suspects’ names to Europol”, the BBC appears to have ‘downgraded’ Hizballah even further. Throughout that article, even the infamously euphemistic BBC description ‘militant group’ does not appear. Instead, Hizballah is described as “The Lebanese Shia group” and later simply as “the Shia group”.
With the EU Foreign Affairs Council set to meet on February 18th 2013 in order to discuss the subject of the designation of Hizballah as a terrorist organization, the use of accurate language and the realistic presentation of the organization and its full range of activities are especially important at this time in order to fully inform BBC audiences of the real issues under discussion.
On that subject, readers may be interested in this article by Matthew Levitt as well as the recently published two-part essay by the veteran Israeli analyst Ron Ben Yishai – here and here.
