Roger Simon;

The dispute of the moment centers around the AP’s refusal to adopt the president’s executive order to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. I have no dog in that particular hunt. They could call that body of water the Gulf of Swordfish for all I care (reference to the great Marx Brothers film “Horsefeathers” deliberate).

Nevertheless, the Biden Administration made similar executive order changes galore, many of them considerably more fraught, to which the AP evinced not one objection and adhered to like well-trained circus animals.

They also did not object to years of acts of “woke” destruction as disgusting (and terroristic) as “militants”—the term they used— pulling down the statue of Theodore Roosevelt in front of New York’s Museum of Natural History when Roosevelt was the man responsible for our national parks. BLM were “militants” to them as well, not terrorists, as they attempted to burn down Minneapolis for their political purposes (also personal gain). The Associated Press linguistically normalized almost every extremist action of recent years, foreign and domestic.

But current rhetorical decisions of the AP are far worse with consequences that enable evil in its most extreme forms.

Most disturbing is their inability to use the word “terrorism” to apply to, well, real terrorists. They claim they rely exclusively on Merriam-Webster for their definitions but there is reason to be skeptical. MW defines terrorism as “the unlawful use or threat of violence especially against the state or the public as a politically motivated means of attack or coercion.”

Wouldn’t that perfectly define Hamas that breaks into a neighboring country, shoots as many random civilians as possible, blows up their cars, destroys their buildings, abducts their citizens, including children and tiny babies, killing many, torturing or raping others, male and female, or starving them to death, in hidden tunnels for now over 500 days. How much “attack” and “coercion” do you need? And it hasn’t stopped.

But no, Hamas are not terrorists. In AP parlance they are “militants.” But because it is the Associated Press, this appellation spreads, surprisingly often even to conservative media. AP journalism, according to its website, is read by 4 billion people a day globally.