If you extend that reasoning, then giving anything airtime is in effect justifying whatever it is they're doing. Allowing union workers to discuss their grievances in the media justifies their strike action. Interviewing someone about why they want to marry someone of the same gender is legitimizing gay marriage. Interviewing a convicted murderer after he's released from jail justifies his actions. Et cetera.

That's really not how the media is supposed to work.

The media is supposed to present facts and opinions about said facts, "both sides of the story" if you will.

As someone who works in the newspaper business (just a small town newspaper, not global events or anything), I can tell you that people will see what they want to in the news. I can write about a local issue as precisely and broadly as I can, including things that people said on both sides of fence, and there will still be some people who accuse me of bias simply because I included the other side's argument. It happens.

Terrorists aren't nice people. They don't do nice things. But, and this is directed to Wibble, isn't it important to understand why they're doing it? Even if they're lying and they're really just undead Islamic cannibals who hate the smell of freedom in the morning, I can't understand the idea that it's bad journalism to report what they say. Of course they're lunatics, and of course you shouldn't think they're "good guys", and of course that's not what BBC or any other outlet that's doing its job wants you to think. They're reporting what these people say. You get to decide what you make of it.

There are points of view out there that are not pleasant to read, but the journalist's job is to tell you what's going on and why, using documents, reported facts, stated opinions, eyewitness accounts, footage/recordings, analysis, etc. As long as those ingredients are used reasonably and are clearly labelled on the packaging, it's fair journalism.

Unless BBC never, ever reports on the "terrorists did bad things today" side of the story, the initial claim in this thread is ridiculous and hyperbolic.