Blood on the BBC’s hands

Specialist pharmacist Anthony Cox has a disturbing article on his site about how the BBC has fed the public hysteria and confusion over MMR, and what the consequences may be for Britain’s population. It’s one thing to be miffed about the BBC wasting licence fee money on extravagant trips for executives and reporting a stridently left-wing agenda, and it’s yet another to realise that — as a licence payer — your money is financing such dangerous misinformation. I have also written elsewhere on what this case, and the Today programme debacle with Andrew Gilligan’s inaccurate reporting on the Iraq dossier, tells us about what really motivates the BBC — and the deadly outcome it all may have.

Comparing and contrasting the BBC’s rotten behaviour on this issue with their rotten behaviour on the issue of WMDs — and the consequence of death in the latter, with the possible consequence of death in the former– brings to mind specks and planks. In both cases, the BBC’s employees have acted recklessly and purely out of self-interest. In both cases, they claim to have the public interest at heart, but in the case of MMR they have actually misled the public and caused greater confusion. I would say that also applies to the BBC’s behaviour in the case of WMDs and Dr David Kelly, and we will hear from Lord Hutton on that soon enough, but at the very least the BBC has itself admitted to getting things very wrong (while assuring those in its employ who got it wrong that their jobs are safe), and a good man died in the course of their follies.

None of this would be forgivable even if the British public wasn’t forced to finance it, but it’s made that bit more distasteful by the fact that we are.