Panic on the streets of London

A roundup on some notes from the London bombings:

The worst headline I saw was from the L.A Daily News: "Bloody hell."

Another interesting headline came from the San Jose Mercury News: "Deadly attacks: Can we be safe?" There were musings that this was a result of the paper's recent changes to make the paper more local. (For example, local news, instead of being in the B section, has been folded into the A section.) It seemed an odd, too-local first-day head to me.

And the BBC, which initially spoke on its Web site of "terrorists," edited the coverage later to referred only to "bombers."

The BBC's guidelines state that its credibility is undermined by the "careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments".

Consequently, "the word 'terrorist' itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding" and its use should be "avoided", the guidelines say.

Rod Liddle, a former editor of the Today programme, has accused the BBC of "institutionalised political correctness" in its coverage of British Muslims.

A BBC spokesman said last night: "The word terrorist is not banned from the BBC."

This prompted one blogger to say that BBC stands for Bad British Copyeditors.