Here is the big banner headline on today’s New York Times website. It also appears above the fold on the front page of the paper’s print edition.

Bomb in Syria Kills Militant Sought as Terrorist

We know that other big media like Reuters (see here) and the BBC, have long shied away from calling terrorists by their name.

But now the self-styled “Paper of Record” seems to be getting itself into a real tizzy about whether Imad Mughniyeh, the terrorist who killed more Americans than anyone else before the 9/11 attacks, who blew up elderly Holocaust survivors together with their grandchildren in the Buenos Aries Jewish center, who personally oversaw the torture of American hostages, who pioneered (for Hezbollah) the suicide bombings, culvert mines and other killing methods that have become routine in Iraqi schools and markets, can just simply be called a terrorist rather than the more benign term “militant”.

(The writers of the Times article call Mughniyeh “one of the most wanted and elusive terrorists in the world.” Why can’t the New York Times editors and headline writers?)