HOMICIDE BOMBING

FoxNews Channel prides itself on switching "suicide bombing" to "homicide bombing" in its news coverage. James Taranto points out the problems with this re-wording (scroll down):

So what's wrong with this? Well, as far as we know, Fox uses the term homicide bombing only in reference to bombings in which the bomber kills himself--in other words, as a dysphemism for suicide bombing. Yesterday's item is a case in point. Reporting on an FBI warning that suicide bombers--that is, bombers who take their own lives in the course of murdering others--may strike in the U.S., Fox changed the term to homicide bombers, which obscured the FBI's meaning. Only if you know that homicide is Foxspeak for suicide is Fox's report even comprehensible.

If homicide means "homicide," then homicide bombing is almost always redundant. Consider these three formulations:

1. A bombing killed four people.
2. A homicide bombing killed four people.
3. A suicide bombing killed four people.

The word homicide in version 2 is superfluous, whereas the word suicide in version 3 conveys additional information, namely the method of bombing. And this is the point: Suicide is a method of bombing, not the goal. It is a particularly horrific method, both because suicide is itself horrible and because the suicide bomber, as compared with the bomber who uses a remote control or timing device, can control where and when the bomb goes off and thereby maximize the carnage.

The idea that calling suicide bombing by its proper name somehow diminishes the victims or glorifies the bomber doesn't make sense. When someone murders people by blowing up a car, we call it a car bombing. That doesn't mean the car is more important than the people.