- LOS ANGELES (Reuters) --
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.
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- An email circulated this week asked staff to instead
use the terms insurgents or guerillas.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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
paper's Baghdad bureau had no objection to the change.
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- 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 it's not inaccurate."
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- Copyright © 2003 The Sydney Morning Herald.
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- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/06/1068013331454.html
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