The point may seem trivial. And in the context of the sickening barbarity seen today, it looks it.

But the refusal of the two main news broadcasters, the BBC and Sky - and others - to call Hamas terrorists just that- terrorists - is more than merely annoying. It is a reflection of a deeper malaise that affects much of our broadcast media: the idea that there are always two sides to every story.

The phrase, "one man's terrorist is aother man's freedom fighter", beloved of so many supposedly independent, neutral analysts and reporters, is one of the most pernicious and dangerous canards around. It's a supposedly smart take. But in reality it's an extension of the post-modern nihilism that has addled so many brains. 

In its notion that there is always another side to a story it really means there is no side. And it's why, today, murderous terrorists who are parading bullet-ridden bodies of Israeli civilians through the streets of Gaza alongside hostages are described not as terrorists but as militants or - as Sky had it - fighters. 

But the issue is deeper than that one word. We hear a lot about BBC (and other broadcasters') bias against Israel. That's the wrong way of looking at it, however. They don't set out to frame reports to condemn Israel. The problem is worse than that. Because they cannot see that there can be one side to a description - that calling a terrorist a terrorist is more accurate than calling him a militant - then they cannot see the problem with, as happened today, providing a platform to an apologist for terror to explain why it is justified.

If you don't think of today's murders as terror, then you can allow them to be justified - or as one correspondent did today, you can start talking about unemployment in Gaza or problems with the power supply, as if they are somehow relevant in reporting the butchering of civilians in their own homes.

Using the word terrorist to describe a terrorist matters.