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.
