Were you wrong or were you wrong ?

And I should have confirmed that stories are numbered sequentially on the BBC website. For example – the BBC’s main report of Blair’s statement on Monday was /46709455. Postings of yesterday’s news have news moved into the range /4679XXX and then /468XXXX.

The case against the BBC is NOT that it suppressed the full text, or even that it delayed it. It is that its main story DISTORTED Blair’s statement.

On Monday afternoon and evening the BBC website did NOT carry the full text of Blair’s statement.

How do I know ? Because I emailed the main BBC report which excised the T word and therefore distorted what Blair was saying to M Phillips and others and also posted it at various blogsites. These emails/postings also gave the URL of the full texdt t the Guardian website – this was the only place I could find it.

In any event, the man in the street does not normlly read the full text of public statements such as this – they read the media reports which are BASED on the statement. The Page 1 version headlined version. Any full text would not be carried on Page 1 – it would typically be on a subsequent page – “buried inside”. On Monday afternoon evening I could not find the full text on the BBC site.

Further, I submit that it actually immaterial whether the full statement was present somewhere else on the website. What matters in this case is that the BBC excised nearly all the instances of the T word in their main report. Including Blair’s clear statement, dramatic at the time, that ascribed the actions on 7/7 were by “Islamist extremist TERRORISTS”.

So I say again the whole thrust of your post is wrong.

What you say seems to hinge on this. I’ve no idea how long it takes for the BBC to get through 1000 urls on their web site, nor whether having a number 1000 higher indicates 1000 postings later. All I can report, accurately, is that, having read the Melanie Phillips piece I was able to go, immediately, to the BBC site, and find the unexpurgated Blair speech. You suggest that there was some earlier time when I couldn’t have done so. That may be true.

The whole point of your post is WRONG.

On Monday afternoon the BBC website did NOT post the text of Blair’s statement on its home page or on the linked “London Bombs – In Depth” page. All it posted, as the lead item, was its weasel version of his statement, with the T word excised. All Blair’s 10 or so references to the terrorists and their deeds as terrorism were excluded or covered by euphemisms such as “bomber” – as in the headline of the report :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4670945.stm

I had to go to the website to get the full text – and that was where the stark comparison struck me- and others.

If you look t the index story number of the full text, it is numerically more than 1000 higher than the main report which the BBC posted. Which indicates much later.

Please email me if you dispute this and I will provide chapter and verse of the stuff I was posting on blogsites on Monday.

And please provide a correction to your piece. You are FACTUALLY wrong. The BBC did mislead the world about what Mr Blair had actually said. Presumably to stick to their ludicrous T-word policy. A policy which, for example, did not let them describe the killing of 25 or more children in Iraq yesterday as terrorism.

I assume you would accept that it is quite wrong of the BBC to have done this.

Incidentally, please note that the blogsite that has made most of the running on this issue has been Harry’s Place – not what you sneer at as “one of the usual suspects” – it is a leftie site.

So – I have called you on your post, on a matter of fact. There is ample contemporaneous evidence to support what I say. I will be interested to see if and how you respond.

There have been lots of Reformations within Islam, these two, for instance.

If you mean that it would be nice if all Muslims became cuddly agnostics instead, I suggest you look closely at the blood soaked activities of Luther and Calvin before you call for a Reformation.

If that were the essence of this global war, it would’ve been over long time ago. Please consider a possibility that the Jews might be just stuck in the middle (and used as pawns) of a much more significant conflict.

Please don’t give Melanie Phillips the “oxygen of publicity”.

Looking forward to Shalom Beck’s equally incisive theory of Oxford University. Being a “tax-funded agency of the State’ academic motives and ethics would clearly be too much to expect when Orwell have obviously proved that its mission is to slavishly “advance the interests” of The State. And I thought I was a reductionist…

If you don’t understand it, how can you know what it is? It’s not an especially subtle point. BBC editorial staff have been reporting on terrorism for many, many years, sometimes at uncomfortably close range. For the most part their experience was not gained in a “global conflict” between Muslims and Jews, but in a strictly local conflict between (mostly Catholic) Irish nationalists and (mostly Protestant) Unionists.

The fact that you refer to a “global conflict” suggests it looms large in your mind. Not everyone sees it that way. For many US soldiers it will be over when their tour of duty ends. For many Iraqis it is mostly a conflict with other Iraqis. For many millions of people in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia it hits the news bulletins now and then, scarcely affecting their lives at all.

This does not purport to be a devastating criticism of anything. I merely suggest that you consider the background to the BBC’s policy before drawing conclusions about it. You will usually arrive at better conclusions that way.