Stealth editing by the BBC

Biased BBC catches the BBC in some more stealth editing. See the two web page snapshots for more.

Andrew Bowman
# Lies, damned lies, and the sleazy, dishonest, BBC stealth editors who cover them up. On Thursday I saw an article on BBC News Online headlined Diplomats mind their language, timestamped Thursday, 15JUL04, 15:03BST. It's an amusing article about diplomatic faux pas'. One thing that caught my attention was this blatant lie:

Margaret Thatcher, again a woman unafraid of speaking her mind, was reported to have told Jane Byrne, mayor in 1960s Chicago, that "the Irish, they're pigs", before remembering her host's family background and adding: "oh-oh, you're Irish".

I made a note and decided to do some fact-checking later. Now, after a chunk of fruitless Googling (save for this quiz page), I went back to the original BBC page to check it again. This time the offending paragraph read:

Princess Margaret, again a woman unafraid of speaking her mind, was reported to have told Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne in 1979, that, "the Irish, they're pigs", before remembering her host's family background and adding: "oh-oh, you're Irish".

I knew the article definitely referred to Margaret Thatcher when I first read it. I checked the timestamp. Unbelievably, after such a major correction, it still read Thursday, 15JUL04, 15:03BST.

While the world went to sleep, shocked at this BBC revelation about Baroness Thatcher, the BBC's gang of sleazy, dishonest, stealth editors crept in, Watergate style, switched the names around, and crept back out again, remembering to leave the timestamp well alone, covering up the evidence of their nasty slander.
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