The AP and Reuters also avoided using the term “terrorist” when referring to the members of the Black September terror group responsible for the massacre.
Instead, the AP referred to them variously as “Palestinian militants,” “captors,” “attackers,” and “assailants,” while Reuters referred to them as “gunmen.”
The New York Times did use the term “terrorists,” but only once near the end of its story, mainly referring to Black September as “Palestinian militants.”
The media’s refusal to use the term “terrorist” is all the more blatant given the German Interior Ministry’s purposeful usage of the term in its English-language press release.
The New York Times and Reuters also appeared to obscure the nature of what actually occurred during the Munich Massacre.
As noted by the AP, the terrorists initially killed two Israeli athletes, taking nine others hostage. Then, while attempting to escape via helicopter with the remaining hostages, a gunfight broke out between the German police and the terrorists. During the gunfight, the terrorists threw a grenade at one of the groups of Israeli athletes while shooting the other group to death at point-blank range.
Reuters, however, claimed that the athletes simply “died after a stand-off,” while The New York Times described their deaths as the result of a “bloody shootout.”