Friday, April 20, 2007

Bullsh!t headline alert!

The BBC tells us "One in 30 aborted babies lives" and when you open the article it says one in 30 fetuses (they're not babies until they're born thanks) aborted for medical reasons (which represents a tiny fraction of abortions and tends to be the very late term abortions because (1) it often takes several months for major medical problems to become apparent and (2) it's often illegal to have non-medical abortions late into a pregnancy) is alive when they bring it out and lives for no more than a few hours. You expect better of the BBC.

4 comments:

Chris Coltrane said...

Looks like they've changed the headline already. Well done, The BBC Website, for carrying the torch of lexical and factual accuracy!!

PS I'm deeply pro-choice, but even I think that aborting actual babies is a step too far!

Cruella said...

Yeah they changed it! Only to "one in 30 aborted foetuses lives", of course still a massive lie. It should say "one in 30 foetuses aborted for medical reasons is alive when removed". Still small victories...

Stan said...

You never know, could be the editor is one of your readers.

I think the BBC online is in danger of becoming no better than a blog (no slight intended) - the incentive is to publish everything in sight ASAP. Looks like someone did a cut-and-paste job on the press-release from the Every Sperm Is Sacred Society.

I think they need to devote more qualified staff - they are actually in the midst of a major staff-ditching exercise just now, which really doesn't help.

Cruella said...

Oh the editor is one of my readers - because I copied my post into the BBc online complaints form and sent it off as I published it here...