JOHN SIMPSON,
Madam, - Lara Marlowe ("Waging a war with words and weapons", Features, November 5th) is quite wrong to accuse the BBC of having been cowed by the Israeli government in its reporting of the Middle East, or of having asked its correspondents in Israel to use the term "targeted killings" (which the Israelis preferred) instead of "assassinations" in reporting the extra-legal murders of Palestinians.
She is also wrong to give your readers the impression that she is writing about something which happened recently. She writes of "an internal BBC memorandum in August", but she is actually referring to a private note written by one of my colleagues to the head of the BBC's Jerusalem bureau in August 2001. This was reported inaccurately in the Independent newspaper in London at the time. The newspaper failed inexplicably to make a single call to the BBC to check whether its information was correct.
This is not about political timidity; it is about the proper use of language. "Assassination" carries the implication of the murder of some prominent figure: most of the people who died at the hands of Israeli hit-squads were unknown outside their immediate area.
As a result of our internal discussion we gave up the inaccurate use of "assassination", preferring "murder" or "killing". When we used the expression "targeted killing", it was in order to stress that this was the way the Israeli government chose to refer to its actions.
Reporting honestly, objectively and fairly on a situation as tense and divisive as this is never easy, but the BBC is committed to go on doing so to the best of its ability. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN SIMPSON,
World Affairs Editor,
BBC Television Centre,
London W12.