On the six o’clock news today

I watched BBC coverage of the awful bombings in Iraq. It was vivid and affecting. The viewer saw terrified crowds separating and re-forming – one minute arousing pity, when we saw a shot of market trolleys pushed into service to carry the wounded away or a glimpse of a man carrying a bloodied baby – and the next, horror, when a mob coalesced around an Iranian pilgrim and looked set to lynch him for what had happened.

These scenes were captured by BBC journalists and cameramen doing their job well, at some risk to themselves.

I noticed one thing. The reporter called the perpetrators “terrorists.” That is correct. It is a classic tactic of violent revolutionaries to spread terror, in the hope that where terror goes, violence and disorder will follow and give the revolutionaries their chance.

How distasteful to think that the reporter will probably be censured by his bosses for lack of ‘impartiality’ between those who slaughter worshippers at prayer and their victims.