The BBC Admits to Misleading the Public

From the Belmont Club:

Tonight the BBC admitted that it has misinformed the international community by telling the world that one of the Danish Muhammad cartoons was a depiction of a pigsnouted Muhammad.

[snip]

What was that about limits proposed on free speech arising out of a duty not to inflame the Muslim street? Under what category of inflammation does attributing a pig-snouted depiction of Mohammed to the Jyllands-Posten cartoons fall, when that cartoon was never published by the newspaper, and as anyone from the BBC might have known by simply obtaining a copy of the cartoons? The blogs have been known this for a long time and more's the shame.

In summary, the major western media are a rare combination of bullies, cowards and liars.

But that's not such a rare combination ... is it?

UPDATE:

By Wretchard:

The BBC, as tool of the British Government, was in fact complicit in the rise of Hitler. In the late 1930s both Winston Churchill and Lloyd George (who had been British PM during WWI) were banned from speaking on the BBC because they might upset Hitler. Candidates to the Cabinet were vetted for their acceptability to Herr Hitler. They did not want to rile him. Later, when Churchill was finally allowed to speak, the BBC sent someone to interview him. The BBC man happened to be Guy Burgess, later famous as one of the Soviet spies. George Orwell modeled the Ministry of Truth in 1984 on the BBC. If anything the BBC has improved since. One hopes.

But there are other interesting comparisons: for example, the Spanish Civil War and the cartoon crisis may be analogues. It was the Spanish Civil War which finally weakened the pacifist movement because Hitler finally struck at something the Communists cared enough about to fight for. The Spanish Civil war was the moment the socialists began to snap out of their dream. And it came about accidentally, partly because Stalin decided to fight Franco and partly from reports filtering back about what Nazis really were. It was the tipping point.

Maybe the cartoon crisis will be that moment -- or the start of that moment. Despite September 11 the liberals aren't yet convinced that the Islamists have come for them. Come especially for them. If Maureen Dowd thought clearly she would be scared out of her wits, scared for her life, and not of BushChimpHitler. For many liberals the WTC, the Pentagon and the Whitehouse were guilty symbols of the Man's power. So they weren't too upset, symbolically speaking, at their destruction. That's why the attack on Denmark's got them stumped. Liberal Denmark, small European nation, generous to Muslim countries, attacked. Why is it being attacked? So they construct lamer and lamer arguments to justify the BushChimpHitler fantasy. Maybe Jylands-Posten was a right wing plot. But now it turns out the Imams cooked up the really inflammatory images. It was a Reichstag Burning alright, but the liberals got the cast of characters completely wrong. One almost pities the liberals in their desperate twists to find some way to avoid recognizing the obvious. And none so blind as they who will not see.