Don’t Mention It.

Amazingly this story fails to mention where the Egyptian twins received their life-extending surgery, though a small hint of the location is dropped in the medical history window. It’s hard to imagine this is a mere oversight since the article later makes much of an “Italy success” to separate conjoined twins. Other national references mentioned in the story include: Egypt, Greece, a “French news agency”, “Guatamalan twins”, “Iranians”, Singapore. This must come under some BBC directive filed under “Don’t mention it if you catch the Great Satan doing good”. Via Andrew Sullivan.

UPDATE: I just had a look at the article in question today (15 October) and am happy to report that a stealth edit has left us with a new, one sentence paragraph (fourth from the top) as follows.

The boys’ successful surgery was performed at the Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, USA.

UPDATE 2: Andrew Sullivan posts an actual response from the Beeb (scroll up) after a generous helping of emails on the subject. And yes, as a Yank, it does strike me as strange whenever I hear BBC newsreaders or read a website referring to “Dallas USA” , etc. It just ain’t the way we talk folks. Note another BBC-related item on Sullivan’s site just below ‘Ed Asner’.