Censoring the word

Richard Aedy: As we go to air, Douglas Wood is being held captive somewhere in Iraq. How exactly should we label his kidnappers? AAP is calling them 'insurgents' and so is the ABC. But The Australian says 'terrorists'. Which is right?

This question is at the heart of a new book, 'Dining with Terrorists'. Its author is the journalist, Phil Rees.

Phil Rees: I've been travelling for a long time with armed groups, and I never use the word 'terrorist' in any of the journalism that I've done in the past. When I joined the BBC, by the way, 20 years ago now, it was assumed, it was a basic standard, that you adopted the idiom that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. That was the rule of thumb; I mean that was what everybody assumed to be the case. You did not refer to anybody either as a terrorist or as a freedom fighter, because that would be taking sides, and your role as a journalist was to be an impartial observer.

Since 9/11, I saw the newspapers in Britain, in America, probably here in Australia, refer to different groups as 'terrorists', and the word had suddenly entered the debate. And journalists, in my view, began taking sides in that. And I felt rather angry at that. I felt that that was actually a mistake, and I think journalism is the poorer for it.

Richard Aedy: I want to pin you down a bit on the use of the word 'terrorist' though, because not to use the word, seems to be, well, a cop-out.

Phil Rees: I think that shows where journalism has gone, in a way, that several of the critics of the book when it was published in London a few weeks ago, have almost presented me as an apologist for some of the worst acts of violence around, which they call 'terrorists', and they think it's absurd that I even question the use of this. Well I think that actually shows the way that the policy of the United States in particularly, in the aftermath of 9/11, has been adopted, and the language of the American and Bush Administration has been adopted throughout the world. Well what is terror? Who is a terrorist?

Richard Aedy: Well let's kind of look at that. Terrorists surely practice terror to try to achieve political ends. It can be a fairly unequivocal definition, can't it?

Phil Rees: The United Nations spent 17 years trying to define terrorism, and they couldn't succeed. Because all countries, and all groups and all political entities at some time, believe they should resort to force. I mean during the Second World War, you know, the French Resistance killed collaborators of the Germans. Now that often included killing their families, killing civilians in a way, politicians. They came back to Britain after the Second World War and were celebrated as heroes. I'm not a pacifist; I think that the bar that should tolerate political violence should be extremely high. There should be dialogue between different groups, but what has happened since 9/11 and when people talk about 'the war on terror', in my view the bar of acceptable political violence by nation-states, particularly for example the invasion of Iraq, has been lowered. And during that invasion, you've got the killing of perhaps up to 100,000 civilians, people who are just as innocent as those who perished in the World Trade Center. And yet, many people accept that as somehow legitimate killing in a war on terror. So I think if people start examining what is going on, they should scrutinise the killing by states, as much as they should by non-state groups.

Richard Aedy: Well yes, you won't get an argument from me on that, and I think we can agree killing is wrong, basically. But to say political violence, that's a euphemism, isn't it, that is terrorism, it's using terror to seek a political end.

Phil Rees: Well the invasion of Iraq was a political violence as well, and I don't think there can be any other explanation for it.

Richard Aedy: But isn't that a canard to say Well States practice this too? It's not the point really, because the terrorists do it.

Phil Rees: Well if terrorism was simply a word used to describe a particular form of military combat, an American military analyst calls it 'asymmetric warfare'.

Richard Aedy: Yes, that's a euphemism too.

Phil Rees: Yes, it's a euphemism, but in my view, it's a kind of accurate term to describe it, because it's not morally loaded. If you use terms like militants, insurgents, guerrillas, you are not saying these people are evil. The word 'terror' conjures up a lot more. If I can persuade you that somebody else is a terrorist, then what we are doing is saying that we agree that this person is morally wrong. And the other thing about the word 'terrorism' now since 9/11, is that in using it, you are buying into the support for the policies of the United States and George Bush.

Richard Aedy: Do you really think that? Do you think they've come to own that word?

Phil Rees: I do, and American military strategists will agree with me on this. They accept it, because after the end of the Cold War, they were looking for a new doctrine that would legitimise the role of the United States as the only superpower.

Richard Aedy: I want to come back to this. But there's other things I want to get on to. Early on in the book, you outline that this very discussion that you and I have just been having, went on in the BBC World Service.

Phil Rees: Well it did, certainly at the time of 9/11, they used the word 'terrorist' to describe the perpetrators. But it is quite funny, that when one of the senior managers suggested that it shouldn't be used again, there was, not a rebellion but I think several staff members think that the BBC should enter the real world, and accept the language of what people in the street are saying. Now fine, but in doing that, as I say, you are in a way, supporting the Bush Administration and the language that it uses and its enemies. Now whether or not you support it, I'm not arguing about the policies of the United States, but at least one should consciously support it, one shouldn't just absorb the language that they supply through the Internet and this barrage of information we're getting now. But the US is such a powerful media force now, that I think there's a great danger of journalists around the world adopting the language of the State Department in chunks, without questioning it, and without analysing what it really means in terms of the significance of it, and there's no more dangerous word than 'terror' and 'terrorism' within that argument.

Richard Aedy: All right. Well for now I'm going to continue to use it. When you met the terrorists, were you frightened? Because it seems to me an extraordinary, gutsy thing to do.

Phil Rees: You say gutsy, I mean I'm not a particularly brave person. What I ensured all the time was that these people are direct links with the political leadership. Because if you read the press, the media, from a lot of these countries where I went to, which is under the influence if not direct control of the government, these people are presented as criminals, madmen. In Algeria, when I probably remained the only Western journalist to have travelled with the armed groups in Algeria, I mean the media presented them as something out of a 1950s horror movie, with a blood lust, you now, chopping the heads off of children, everything you could possibly think of. Well you know, I met lawyers who led me to other people, led me to intermediaries, and when I went to see them, was I frightened? I mean I spent the first day probably kissing 100 bearded men who hugged me. I mean I was, apart from getting a sort of rash on my face, you know, I certainly wasn't frightened, because in the end they were pleased that a journalist had made the effort to go to the territory that was under their control to listen to them.

Richard Aedy: Why eat with them? Why eat with these guys?

Phil Rees: Well the book's title, 'Dining with Terrorists' is slightly ironic. But it does have, I think, an important point. That when you eat with somebody, at least you're accepting at the level of basic humanity in sharing that with them. I felt it was almost a little bit of initiation. If you sat down, chatted to them, over food, they talked about their families, they talked about football, I mean I was surprised finding Manchester United supporters amongst the armed groups.

Richard Aedy: I'm not at all surprised to hear that Manchester United supporters were among the armed groups, but go on.

Phil Rees: But you know, I found another for example, talked to him, that his mother lived in North London, and he wanted to be filmed to show his mother that he was alive. I mean there were a lot of oddities, but basically you realise these people are human beings; they're not people from outer space.

Richard Aedy: It humanises totally.

Phil Rees: Totally, totally does. And obviously they like to make sure that you know that you're happy, they feel that serving you food is a matter of hospitality, and a certain amount of pride for them as well.

Richard Aedy: But isn't there a kind of moral relativism about the book? I felt slightly uncomfortable when you're with the Basque terror group, the ETA, I almost felt that you were excusing them.

Phil Rees: I had so many people in the Basque country that they feared that their identity was being denied and squashed, that their identity as Basques would disappear. And I think what's important in the world we live in, and perhaps, I'm Welsh by the way, and I think this is something that it's very interesting that so many of these groups I met were quite pleased when I said I was Welsh, because they regarded England as a force of colonialism, a force of domination. Even the Islamist groups.

Richard Aedy: Actually in Lebanon, when you say you're Welsh and that in the past people have burnt cottages that the English own, there's a sort of pause in the book, and they say, 'Would you like any military help?'

Phil Rees: Well they totally transformed my relationship with this group of Hezbollah fighters that I was with. If you wanted names, I kind of dropped the conversation in a way, because he was so insistent because he wanted – he said, 'You should have an army like the Irish Republican Army which is gaining freedom for Ireland.' So the dialogue there – a lot of people think that Islamists or Muslims I guess, they're just fanatical about Islam, and want to turn the world into an Islamic state, no, they were concerned with oppression.

Richard Aedy: Well that's opening up a dimension that would take hours of programming to fully go over, so I think we'll close there. It's been very interesting Phil Rees, thanks for coming in and joining us on The Media Report.

Phil Rees: Thank you.

Richard Aedy: Phil Rees is author of 'Dining with Terrorists', published by Pan Macmillan.