Far more dangerous than the hard anti-Americanism of the far left (and some elements of the far right) is the moral relativism that prevails among Western liberal elites, especially in journalism. Exhibit A is Reuters. As we noted on Sept. 24, 2001:
Stephen Jukes, global news editor for Reuters, the British wire service, has ordered his scribes not to use the word terror to refer to the Sept. 11 atrocity. . . . "We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist," Jukes writes in an internal memo. "To be frank, it adds little to call the attack on the World Trade Center a terrorist attack."
Reuters is the most self-righteous about it, but many other news organizations also use terms like militants, commandos, guerrillas and even dissidents to refer to terrorists--even though in some cases these terms are not only overly solicitous to the enemy but factually inaccurate (a guerrilla attack, for instance, has a military target, while a terrorist attack targets civilians).
