Politicians reacted in disbelief to the revelation that for over two hours yesterday, the BBC News website carried a request for people in Iraq to report on troop movements.The request was removed from the website after it sparked furious protests that the corporation was endangering the lives of British servicemen and women. But according to accounts last night, a story on a major operation by US and Iraqi troops against al-Qa'eda somewhere north of Baghdad contained an extraordinary request for information about the movement of troops. Last night the BBC confirmed the wording of the request was: "Are you in Iraq? Have you seen any troop movements? If you have any information you would like to share with the BBC, you can do so using the form below."I'd put this down to rank stupidity rather than malicious intent but really are there no editors at the BBC with even a fraction of a clue? Is it so hard to see that this sort of information could get troops, British troops, hurt or killed?
Update: John Kelly is my kind of guy! Read
1 comment:
I can't remember the precise incident, or where I read about it (I believe it's in Paul Wilkinson, but I can't check as most of my terrorism books are in London), but there has certainly been at least one instance where in a terrorists hostage situation, special forces have had to cancel operations to storm hijacked aircraft because the press have refused to stop filming or blabbing on about preparations for it and the information has been broadcast to the terrorists on board. Frankly, the press are often a very self-righteous (accountability for thee, but not for me) law unto themselves.
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