Contact: info@TerrorPetition.com

Jerusalem – TerrorPetition.com, a coalition of concerned citizens worldwide, has launched a major petition drive calling on newspapers and broadcast media to label Palestinian suicide bombers as "terrorists."

The group criticized news agencies like MSNBC.com, BBC and Reuters for refusing to refer to Palestinian suicide bombers as "terrorists." Instead, they use the terms "militants," "activists," or even "freedom fighters."

TerrorPetition.com is collecting 100,000 signatures, at which point organizers will present the petition to editors and executives of hundreds of media outlets worldwide. The grassroots campaign is being coordinated by HonestReporting.com, a non-profit media watch group.

"The media apparently finds it safer -- and easier -- to lump everything into one moral category," said Ari Harow of HonestReporting.com. "The media says it doesn't want to make moral judgments, but these neutral words suggest some moral justification for this madness."

The petition drive was sparked by an April 2002 campaign by "Minnesotans Against Terrorism" protesting the Minneapolis Star Tribune's policy of refusing to call Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians "terrorism." The Minnesota petition was signed by U.S. Senators Paul Wellstone and Mark Dayton, and Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura.

Criticism of the media's policy has also come from within the ranks of its own staffers. On March 11, 2002, MSNBC.com ombudsman Dan Fischer wrote in a column: "Suicide bombings at night clubs, pizza parlors, or wedding celebrations are 'terrorist' attacks in my book. So is the ambush of a civilian bus, nationalist-inspired kidnapping and murder, or the placement of a bomb in a schoolyard. I think it's inherently inconsistent to refer, as an MSNBC.com Mideast story did on March 7, to 'militants killing civilians.'"

On March 20, 2002, Fischer wrote a column confirming that MSNBC.com "reporters and producers have been instructed not to use [the term 'terrorism'] in news reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict except in direct quotations."

The BBC's policy was expressed by Joanna Mills, editor of BBC World Update, who wrote: "It is the style of the BBC World Service to call no one a terrorist, aware as we are that one man's terrorist is another one's freedom fighter."

"The BBC policy is dangerous because it obscures the Western world's fight for freedom and security," Harow says. "To call 'one man's terrorist another man's freedom fighter' is an insult to true freedom fighters throughout history like George Washington, Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr."

The sponsors of the Palestinian suicide attacks – Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – are all listed by the U.S. State Department as terrorist organizations.

The legal definition of terrorism adopted by the US State Department appears in Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d): "...premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience."

Even Yasser Arafat, writing in The New York Times on February 3, 2002, described Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians as "terrorists."

Harow says: "This petition brings together thousands of citizens from every walk of life to say: The media's policy is wrong. When someone deliberately tries to kill as many women and children as possible, that's terrorism, plain and simple."

The petition coordinator, HonestReporting.com, has 30,000 members worldwide and operates websites in English, Italian, Spanish and Russian.