“Demonstrators”

I think it was on yesterday’s 8 am radio news that I heard the rioters captured and beaten by the British Army two years ago described as ‘demonstrators’, with its comforting overtones of placards, badges and cries of ‘What Do We Want ?”.

Blogger Squander Two noticed it too. He thinks the ‘demonstrators’ were the ‘demonstrators’ described in this BBC report.

That is not to justify the beatings. Were BBC journalists to be attacked, they would doubtless react quite differently. But as BBC correspondents like to remind us, there are two sides to every story.

UPDATE – I’m reminded of the BBCs reporting of the Indonesian riots preceding the fall of the Suharto regime in May 1998. Those burning cars and buildings in Jakarta were described in bulletins as ‘protesters’ and ‘demonstrators’, and one R4 bulletin described ‘demonstrators’ burning and looting, observing that ‘Chinese areas were particularly targeted’. A remarkably restrained description of racist mob violence, and one which it is impossible to imagine the BBC using if the rioters were, say, white Britons. As reports over the next few days pointed to continuous anti-Chinese violence including mass rape, the tone of reporting changed and the ‘demonstrators’ became ‘rioters’ – which of course they had been from the start.