The BBC : starting a kerfuffle about words

Yet again the BBC made the faux pas this morning of allowing a journalist to insert his own bias into the Today programme. The offending phrase was "the war against Iraq". No, he didn't refer to the estimated one million Iraqis butchered by Saddam, but the war which Iraq's allies waged to remove Saddam from power and introduce democracy. The neutral phrase would have been "the war in Iraq" or simply "the Iraq war". If the BBC wished to be infected with truth it might have used "the war FOR Iraq".

Don't bother writing to tell me that you think the BBC's phrase is fair enough. That is your political stance, and you are as entitled to it as I am to mine. But the BBC is NOT entitled to take a political stance. It is obligated to be neutral.

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