Following on from yesterday's post, Someone else's debate...
The BBC used Twitter today to promote a new blogpost by BBC home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani.
His piece expanded on the extraordinary remark he made in yesterday's article on the Dewsbury suicide bomber that "the UK" had held a "debate" ten years ago about whether the 7/7 terrorists were "victims" rather than "terrorists" or "criminals. (As far as I'm aware "the UK" must certainly did not hold any such debate at the time).
Here's what the BBC tweeted today:
Are westerners who go to fight for Islamic State victims or criminals? @BBCDomC discusses http://t.co/kPYN5pRjYN pic.twitter.com/BvCwHFScsG
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) June 16, 2015
Now, I think it's safe to say that a lot of people felt either astonished or furious at the BBC for even asking that question.
The response on Twitter was pretty much unanimous, saying 'Of course they are criminals and terrorists, and the BBC's a complete disgrace'.
Dominic Casciani's early response to this tidal wave of criticism was to sent out a tweet saying that his Twitter feed had been on the end of "a fine piece of trolling" (if I remember his choice of words correctly)....
....though he appears to have thought better of doing so and deleted it now.
Did he get a lot of unacceptable abuse? As this is Twitter, very probably. But, as you can see for yourselves if you skim back through his timeline today, he was also on the receiving end of an absolute torrent of non-abusive criticism from large numbers of people - most of whom gave every impression of being genuinely angry with him - and the BBC - about this.
Did it never occur to him to think that this might happen? Or is he locked in some out-of-touch BBC way of thinking which allows him to believe (a) that "the UK" really did debate whether the 7/7 terrorist were "victims" ten years ago and that (b) "the UK" needs to have that debate again now?
