“President George W Bush says

a plot to blow up US-bound airliners shows the US is still at war with extremists” – reports the BBC.

That’s the main news front page.

Liars.

He actually said, “The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.”

(Emphasis added by me in both cases.)

Clicking the link from the main news page to the actual story – fair do’s, it’s an improvement. Somebody worked quite hard; added a a totally unecessary paragraph break here, a line of dots covering up a single word there… all to make something nearly as accurate as just repeating the man’s actual words. It says,

President George W Bush has said a plot to bomb US-bound flights from the UK is a “stark reminder” that the US is still at war with Islamic extremists.

Mr Bush said it showed “Islamic fascists… will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom”.

Hat tip: Archduke and others.

ADDED LATER: It’s easy to find oneself beginning to accept the tendency of the BBC to make certain types of false statements simply because it keeps happening. For instance, as it did here, the BBC regularly changes non-PC words or phrases to their PC equivalents not only in its own reports (bad enough) but even when quoting people who did, deliberately, use words such as “terrorist” or “Islamic fascist”. Another example of a reprehensible behaviour that one finds oneself beginning to accept through familiarity is “stealth editing” – the BBC’s regular practice of quietly changing a story but not changing the “Last Edited” field at the top of the webpage. There have been dozens, even hundreds, of examples of this detailed in this blog – but one still meets people who are surprised that the BBC would allow a false statement to stand, and even people who say, “that story can’t have been changed, see, it says the time it was last edited up there.”