WASHINGTON (AP) – When FBI Director James Comey discussed on national television the massacre at an Orlando nightclub, he made an off-the-cuff policy decision not to speak the gunman’s name.
“You will notice that I am not using the killer’s name, and I will try not to do that,” Comey said during the live news conference.
By then, the name Comey was refusing to say had already been known for nearly 24 hours: Omar Mateen. Forty-nine people were killed in the attack, the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
Comey’s pronouncement reflects a change in how federal officials discuss terrorism cases, and it opened the door to questions about whether the intense focus on extremists since 9/11 has unintentionally glorified them.
It was also the latest turn in a renewed debate about the way politicians talk about this issue. The same day, Republican Donald Trump urged President Barack Obama to resign for refusing to use the words “radical Islam” in his response to the Florida attack. Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton inched closer, using the term “radical Islamism,” but she stressed action over words. Obama dismissed such criticism as “yapping” and said focusing on the gunman’s Muslim faith, not his self-described allegiance to an extremist group, “suggests entire religious communities are complicit in violence.”