Many of the words on the list are negative (some were also definitely
slanted or, at the very least, wishy-washy). But calling somebody an
"assailant" or a "bomber" or a "criminal" is pretty clearly negative. In
this case "attackers", "hostage-takers", "gunmen" and "captors" seem
perfectly descriptive and acceptable.
The Sun article itself seems somewhat slanted since it's presenting a list
of words, but not describing the context. It lists words used in
description not words used _exclusively_ in description without making that
distinction clear.
I just grabbed an article from "The New York Times" from the second
("Insurgents Seize School in Russia and Hold Scores") and the following
references were in the article: "Insurgents" (and "Heavily armed
insurgents"), "Guerrillas", "Terrorists" and "Rebels".
The term "terrorist" is used, at quick count, at least six times in the
article (often in terms of an act).
They seemed to favor the term "guerrillas" to describe the attackers. In my
dictionary that's "irregular soldier, usually politically motivated: a
member of an irregular paramilitary unit, usually with some political
objective such as the overthrow of a government". That definition seems to
fit rather well actually.
In other articles I scanned "fighters", "captors", "attackers", and
"separatists" where all used.
There is a fine line between a euphemism and a synonym. Even the Sun
article presented doesn't say "terrorist action" (or something like it) - it
says "attack". Well, it would seem if "attack" is a valid description of
the event then "attacker", at the very least, would be a valid description
of those that carried it out.
These are, after all, writers and English is, after all, an insanely rich
language. It didn't matter to me that the word "terrorist" wasn't used
often, what mattered was that the horror of the situation was conveyed.
Most of the news outlets that I read did that very well. There was no
question that these were "very bad people".
I don't see how forcing a singular label onto all of them would have helped
explain the situation any better. In fact it seems like it would just work
to castrate the word itself through overuse.
Jim Davis
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