A little over one year ago. . . .
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War declared on resistance
November 7, 2003
Los Angeles: The Los Angeles Times has ordered its journalists to stop describing anti-American forces in Iraq as resistance fighters, saying the term romanticises them and evokes World War II-era heroism.
An email circulated this week asked staff to instead use the terms insurgents or guerillas.
An assistant managing editor, Melissa McCoy, said on Wednesday that the memo followed a discussion among top editors at the paper and was not sparked by reader complaints.
McCoy said she considered the term resistance fighters an accurate description of Iraqis battling US troops, but said it also evoked World War II - specifically the French Resistance or Jews who fought against Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto.
She was confident that Times reporters who used the term had no intention to romanticise the Iraqis who have killed more than 100 US soldiers since Washington declared the war all but over in May. The paperīs Baghdad bureau had no objection to the change.
David Hoffman, foreign editor of The Washington Post, said his paper had used the phrase resistance fighters to describe Iraqi forces and had no objection to it. "They are resisting an American occupation so itīs not inaccurate."
Reuters
This story was found at: [
link to www.smh.com.au]
