For no obvious reason the BBC website uses inverted commas here and there to give a hint of ‘qualifying’ or subjectifying or something words or phrases.

Look at this latest example:

Eugene Terreblanche ‘killers’ in South Africa court

I suppose there might be a case for putting the word killers in inverted commas if the idea is to suggest that it remains only an allegation that they were in fact killers.

But no:

The two farm workers, aged 28 and 15, have admitted beating him to death in a dispute over unpaid wages, police say.

So is there a sly implication that the police are lying?

Oddly enough, here the BBC uses the M-word:

The murder of white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche has reopened many old wounds in South Africa.

It’s all so … confusing.

Update: the BBC story has changed in the past couple of hours so that the ‘killers’ have disappeared from the title. But they have left their traces elsewhere.

Now the story has this (emphasis added):

The BBC’s Jonah Fisher in Ventersdorp says about 500 people gathered outside court – divided equally between white supremacists, local black residents and the police.

How on earth do they know that every ‘white’ person there is a ‘white supremacist’ or indeed that every ‘black’ person is a ‘resident’?

Propaganda masquerading as ‘reporting’.