Voice of America, the government’s taxpayer-funded news media operation, has instructed its reporters to stop calling Hamas terrorists.
The Oct. 7 sneak attack on Israel can be labeled a “terrorist attack,” but those who carried it out cannot be called terrorists, VOA’s editor for news standards told employees last week. They were instead told to use “militants” or “fighters.”
“We cannot favor one side over another or do anything that feeds even the perception of bias,” Carol Guensburg wrote in an email.
She said that meant not taking part in demonstrations, and getting varied perspectives, and it also meant being “especially careful with word choice.”
“The Oct. 7 attacks on Israel may be described as terrorist attacks or acts of terror, but avoid calling Hamas and its members terrorists, except in quotes,” she wrote. She said the danger in using the term is that it could be “used to demonize individuals and groups with whom the speaker disagrees.”
A spokeswoman defended the guidance as similar to the approach taken by other major media organizations, including The Associated Press and the BBC, and said it conforms with VOA’s own best practices guide.
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According to that guide, the words “terror” and “terrorist” aren’t forbidden but are supposed to be used “with extreme care.”
“It is up to editors to determine if they are most appropriate terms to use,” VOA says in its guide.
In the wake of the guidance, VOA employees debated how much blame to heap on Israel for the attack. Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s bureau chief at the White House, pushed to include Hamas’ perspective that the attack “was done in retaliation for Israel’s decades-long opposition.”
VOA is run by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors, though the network considers itself editorially independent. Taxpayers shelled out $267 million for VOA in fiscal year 2023, and the network has asked for a nearly $20 million raise for 2024.
That makes the decision to avoid using terrorist verbiage tricky.
The U.S. has designated Hamas as a terrorist group for decades, and top Biden administration officials have repeatedly used the term to describe the cabal that runs the government in Gaza.
Kenneth R. Weinstein, who served on the board overseeing VOA from 2013 to 2020 and was chairman from 2017 to 2020, blasted the network’s order not to call the perpetrators terrorists.
“I’m outraged that after a pogrom of this magnitude such a directive went out,” he said. “There’s no place for moral equivalence in U.S. international broadcasting.”
One former U.S. official who alerted The Times to VOA’s decision feared it suggested prevarication by the administration.
“The political leadership of a U.S. government-funded media organization telling its reporters not to call Hamas a terrorist group calls into question whether the Biden administration no longer believes that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and quietly decided to use the VOA to signal that the designation no longer applies,” the source said.
VOA’s stance is all the more striking given the words of Amanda Bennett, the current CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
In an Oct. 11 statement celebrating the work of VOA in particular, she called the Oct. 7 violence “Hamas perpetrated terrorist attacks that killed and injured thousands.”
She said VOA saw a 64% increase in views of its videos on digital platforms, “reflecting the demand for the comprehensive and nuanced reporting of its 48 language services.”
The British Broadcasting Corporation, funded by the U.K. government, had a policy of not labeling Hamas terrorists. After intense criticism following this month’s attack, the BBC said it would use the term “proscribed terrorist organization.”
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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