A Media Blog reader e-mails the following:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamidreza Asefi, here Thursday condemned terrorist attacks on London’s transport network.
According to Foreign Ministry’s Department of Information and Press, Asefi expressed disapproval of terror attacks on London which killed and injured a number of people.
He condoled the next-of-kin of those killed and injured, denouncing resort to terror to reach aims as “inappropriate method.”

Naturally we can debate Iran’s sincerity here, but the fact that even Iran can call a terrorist attack what it is, while Reuters cannot, is pretty astounding.

My friend who worked for Reuters until recently told me, “They’re allowed to say ‘explosion’ ‘blast’ and they can use the word ‘terrorist’ if someone else says it. They had someone else call this a terrorist attack [in their story today], but they can’t come out and say it. It wasn’t until last year that they said the 9/11 hijackers were hijackers. Their policy on that was that, since they hadn’t been tried in court, they couldn’t be called hijackers, but last year they sent around an e-mail saying that the company policy had changed.”

Honest Reporting has more.