StatCounter

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Spot the missing words

Yes it's the BBC again. This time regarding this article headlined 'Four men admit London Stock Exchange bomb plot'. It's quite a long piece but despite the following hints, there are two words that are noticeable by their absence:
'Four men inspired by al-Qaeda have admitted planning to detonate a bomb at the London Stock Exchange.

Mohammed Chowdhury, Shah Rahman, Gurukanth Desai and Abdul Miah pleaded guilty to engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism.

The men, from London and Cardiff, were arrested in December 2010 and were set to stand trial at Woolwich Crown Court.

Five other men have pleaded guilty to other terrorism offences and all nine will be sentenced next week.

The men, who are all British nationals, had been inspired by the preachings of the recently-killed radical extremist Anwar Al-Awlaki.
...

It emerged that those who admitted planning to target the London Stock Exchange wanted to send five mail bombs to various targets during the run up to Christmas 2010 and discussed launching a "Mumbai-style" atrocity.

A hand-written target list discovered at the home of one of the men listed the names and addresses of London Mayor Boris Johnson, two rabbis, the US embassy and the Stock Exchange.

...

The terrorists met because of their membership of various radical groups and stayed in touch over the internet, through mobile phones and at specially arranged meetings.'
Almost a thousand words in all and no mention in the article of Islam or Islamist terrorism or even that these men were all Muslims. In fact the only acknowledgement of this inconvenient fact was in Matt Prodger's analysis side-bar where he does manage to admit that 'The men from Stoke got as far as pondering the logistical problems of religiously observant Muslims planting bombs in pub toilets.'

It is odd that on the BBC if a Christian fundamentalist or right-wing Christian is involved in terrorism then the religion is highlighted in the first few lines of the report (if not the headline) whether or not the religion is significant to the story. However when Muslims are involved then the religion of the guilty is suddenly not important to the news. Why the double standards BBC?



UPDATE: Finally this evening I hear BBC Radio 5Live describe these individuals as 'Islamists', about bloody time too.

Mind you the original BBC article has not changed, the links to other news sites include:
Yahoo! UK and Ireland Islamists admit plot to blow up London Stock Excha and Sky News Islamists Admit Stock Exchange Bomb Plot &

What will the poor BBC readers think when they see these headlines?

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