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In times of conflict, language is highly contested. As well as military battles there are propaganda ones as well.
If a government bombing raid causes the death and maiming of innocent civilians how much more comfortable is it to use the term 'collateral damage'?
Terrorists wish to be called ‘freedom fighters’ or ‘soldiers on active service’, though of course they can be all of those; their bosses sometimes refer to themselves as of an ‘army council’, and give themselves grand sounding titles.
The Prime Minister and over a 100 back bench MPs want the BBC to stop using the term ‘Islamic State’ to describe the organisation which is conducting terrible atrocities all over the Middle East.
The BBC’s Director General has said no.
This particular conflict is set to run for some time.
One of David Cameron’s predecessors as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, also attacked the BBC for its use of language, particularly during The Troubles and The Falklands War.
IRA were just terrorists in her book and when the BBC refused to refer to ‘our’ troops fighting in The Falklands she blew her top. In her view the BBC was either for or against ‘us’.
The Corporation, well aware of its worldwide reputation for objectivity, even when British national interests were involved, fought back tenaciously.
There were bruises all round.
How will this present argument be resolved?
Well the BBC has an unexpected ally. The Daily Mail has written a ive editorial. Our listeners were not reticent about expressing their views.
Also this week we discussed how to make a career in comedy on Radio 4.
It’s one thing to win a stand up award at Edinburgh, often using highly visual comic gags - entirely another to have similar success in radio, where words have to do much more work.
One of our contributors in this section of the programme was Marcus Brigstocke – aka Giles Wemmbley-Hogg.
I particularly ire his brand of fearless comedy, often demonstrated on the wonderful Now Show. Marcus will take on anybody and anything. He told me he had just written a new comedy for Radio 4 about feminism and Twitter trolls, which he was astonished to find ed through Radio 4 compliance, so I look forward to the reaction when that is transmitted. I hope you enjoy our discussion.
I have such iration for comedians. I could no more tell a joke on a public stage than pretend to enjoy the work of Kanye West.
Roger Bolton
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