What’s wrong with the word ‘bomber’?

It’s ages since I’ve read one of these op-ed pieces. So that’s why I’ve not been able to think of much to blog about of late.

Anyway, via Matt T I see this piece by Nick Cohen:

A misguided obsession with objective reporting is undermining the BBC’s credibility as a news organisation

Is it just me or does that sentence make absolutely no sense whatsoever? Surely being obsessed with objective reporting is a good thing for a news organisation to be? I don’t know — some people think the BBC is too biased. Now some people think it’s too objective! Whatever next?! (Apologies to Backword Dave, from whom I basically stole the idea of taking the piss out of that strapline.)

(Update: Doh! Hadn’t realised that he’d actually done a proper blog post about it and everything (via).)

Having read the article, I think it’s probably safe to assume that it’s just a mistake by a sub-editor or something. Which is quite ironic, considering it appears underneath the headline, “Stop castrating the language”.

The whole article is really confusing though. Cohen starts out by saying that the BBC’s cautious policy on the word ‘terrorist’ is “reasonable”. Immediately after that he goes on to criticise the BBC for, in his view, not using the word enough.

While we’re on the issue, I don’t really understand all these people who complain about the BBC’s policy on the word. Whilst nobody can ever quite seem to agree on what constitutes a terrorist and what doesn’t, the use of the word ‘bomber’ (not a problem for the BBC, as far as I know) is surely every bit as explicit as, and less ambiguous than, the use of the word ‘terrorist’?

Cohen goes on to say:

‘Bomber’, ‘attacker’ and ‘gunman’ allow no distinction between fighters who assault military targets and fighters who assault civilian targets.

Well, no. But I think it’s obvious that if it is reported that four bombs go off on public transport it’s pretty safe to assume that the targets weren’t military ones.

And it’s hardly as though you could confuse the word ‘insurgent’ with the phrase ‘armed wing of the Liberal Democrats’, is it? Oh wait a minute. It seems as though you could if you were Nick Cohen.

I see I’ve been tagged again by this book meme that’s been going around blogs for the past few months.

Because of my *ahem* sporadic reading habits, I won’t follow the conventional questionnaire format.

How many books do I own? Who knows? I think, because of my age, I keep on chucking old books out. Every once in a while I just need to chuck a whole pile of books out, thinking, “I’ve not read this since I was 10.” Before recently, most of my book collection was made up of ten-year-old childrens’ reference books. You know, the Dorling Kindersley ones.

I loved The Children’s Illustrated Encyclopedia when I was younger. Now that’s an eleven-year-old encyclopedia with a target audience of somebody about eleven years younger than me. Nowadays I just use my parents’ encyclopedia. Just another one of the perks of living at home. Which is why I don’t know how many books I own. I never look at most of the books on my own personal shelves; I use my parents’ books instead.

I do have my own books though. The shelf looks neat because I just cleared it out recently. The bottom shelf is the non-fiction shelf. About a quarter of them are Formula 1 books. The rest is made up of children’s science books. When I was younger I was particularly fascinated by astronomy and meteorology — just a couple of the interests that I lost in the puberty fog. I keep the books though, in case I ever want to read about them again. There is also a thirty-year-old Dictionary of Music (another interest I ditched).

Further along there are the political books I attempted to read a couple of years ago. The last political book I read (almost) cover-to-cover was George Monbiot’s The Age of Consent, of which I have to say, “nice idea, shame about the realism.” Alongside Michael Moore’s Adventures in a TV Nation, there is the obligatory Stupid White Men, and Downsize This! I never fully read the latter. I never fully read Nick Cohen’s Pretty Straight Guys either.

I’ve given up with political books; I don’t like to spend that amount of time reading just one side of the argument — terribly lopsided. I much prefer to see all sides of the argument — another great thing about blogs! When I was reading Pretty Straight Guys, I was thinking, “do I really need to read this book to know why I dislike the Labour government?” Plus, you get some funny looks reading a book with a title like that. Anyway, Nick Cohen still asks you to support Labour! What’s that all about? Clearly, I should be the one writing the books.

The fiction shelf is rather more slimline; it shares a shelf with The S–Z of my CD collection. Lots of novels I read when I was younger, the bulk of which are Adrian Mole books, and my father’s own book sits there, although I’ve never read it yet!

Right now I’m reading Vurt by Jeff Noon. Garry recommended it to me the last time this book meme came around to me. When I mentioned it to my father he knew exactly what I was talking about, and said he had intended on buying it himself (even though he was unimpressed with one of Noon’s other books). I started reading it in the car on the way back home from Glasgow. It was late in the day so the sun was shining a funny colour and casting long shadows; I was listening to The Future Sound of London. The whole combination produced a weird feeling. I’m only a bit of the way though, but I think that parts of it are a bit silly — but I love the style of it, so I’ll carry on reading.

Vurt is the only book I’ve read in a while — it’s certainly the first story for a very long time. The last one was Animal Farm and I can’t remember whether I read that one or two years ago. I confess that I think that novels are kind of an unwanted distraction really. Most of the books I read these days are university-related. So there are books on politics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics and Economic History. Those Economic History books are kind of dry, but they cover the subject very well.

A book I’m wanting to buy is Working the Wheel, a book by Martin Brundle and Maurice Hamilton about motor racing circuits. The price is a bit steep though; I’ve scoured The Works but to no avail. Thankfully a paperback version comes out in October.

doctorvee

Archive: nickcohen