A video from yesterday evening's Newsnight is going viral, thanks to an outspoken guest on the politics show. In an impassioned speech, journalist Simon Jenkins lays into the media's coverage (including the BBC's) of the Westminster Bridge attack on Wednesday in which four people died (including the attacker), insisting it was handled in an incorrect manner.
He said: "The BBC today has made a choice. They've opted, if I may say, with the terrorist. No one is suggesting you ignore it... You have a choice of prominence and the prominence given to them now is aiding and abetting terrorism. You should choose to treat it as a crime. Under the IRA terrorists and even the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] ones, we treated them as crimes."
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"In this case probably some crazy guy for all I know who's gone mad and done something really stupid and he's dead. It's a crime. All over London people are doing crazier things with knives and cars and people are dying. It should be publicised... But it's quite different from describing it with this tremendous clutter of politics and Islam and religion. It's quite wrong and it is a new phenomenon, not on the part of the terrorists. Terrorism is just a method of getting publicity. We are the people who give them publicity and we're giving it to them now."
Do you think the reporting of Wednesday's incident aids terrorism? Watch the video here and decide for yourself.
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