When I blogged about the Reuters policy on using words like terrorism or terrorist there was some support and some criticism, as you would expect. Paul Butler urged us not to beat about the bush, but to be firm on our convictions. Onno Oerlemans said that avoiding the use of emotive terms was a wise policy. Dastarblazer suggested there were other vague and emotive terms used by journalists, such as ‘democracy‘ and asked if Reuters had guidelines on their use.

Terrorism is a phenomenon that most people abhor. Nevertheless it exists and the job of Reuters journalists is to report when it occurs, what its consequences are and what might be its causes. In doing so we have no convictions other than to report the news accurately and without bias. Just as we think long and hard about how we describe acts of violence and their perpetrators we take care on the language we use about political activity. There are different forms of democracy and different understandings of what the term entails. There are states that say they are democracies but whose elections are routinely condemned by outsiders as unfair. Is democracy just a system of universal suffrage or do you need to have signed up to standards on human rights to qualify? Any label applied unthinkingly is a barrier to good journalism. Sometimes terms like ‘populist’ or ‘reformist’ are applied to governments without careful consideration, leading to unconscious bias for or against them. Reuters does not judge if a system of government is good or bad, it is our job to describe its characteristics accurately. The Reuters Style guide says neutrality is the hallmark of our news brand. It is up to readers to decide if they prefer Cuba’s politics to Canada’s, Sweden’s social model or that of the United States and if China’s economics are more to their taste than Chile’s.

Sean Maguire is Editor, Political and General News 

Photo by Fatih Saribas of voting in recent Turkish election