Mumbai exposes the media.....

The BBC couldn't refer to the Mumbai terrorists as terrorists....but look at the New York Times...

For most of the Mumbai siege, the BBC went out of its way to avoid reporting that the Jewish community centre was one of the seven targets. At one point viewers were told that “an office building” had been targeted (referring to the Jewish centre as such).

Then on Friday morning, TV pictures of Indian commandos storming the besieged Jewish centre were broadcast by networks around the world. Their faces covered by balaclavas, the commandos rappelled from helicopters onto the roof while Indian sharpshooters in buildings opposite opened fire. While other channels were gripped by these dramatic pictures, BBC World was not, almost pretending there was no siege at the Jewish centre — even though by then it was one of only two sites that remained under attack in Mumbai. Had the terrorists chosen to besiege a church or mosque instead can you imagine the BBC ignoring it this way?

Meanwhile — perhaps even more disgracefully — a New York Times report on the last day of the siege stated: “It is not known if the Jewish centre was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene.”

Has The Times learned anything since the Holocaust when, even after the war ended in the spring of 1945, the paper infamously refused to report that the Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Germans and so on killed in the camps had been Jews, and killed as Jews?

Dozens of eyewitness accounts from local Indians said the gunmen shouted “Allah Akbar” from the Jewish centre. The centre is housed in a non-descript block and is not obviously marked from the outside. It is the one Jewish building in a densely crowded city of millions. And The Times, the self-proclaimed paper of record, wants to let readers think it might have been an accidental target?

There was nothing accidental about any of the sites that the terrorists attacked. And it was no accident that Mumbai was hit. It is the most multi-religious city in India – with Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsees and Jews living in relative harmony.