A senior BBC News executive Friday admitted that the reporting of allied military claims in Iraq that later prove false, such as heralding the fall of Umm Qasr at least nine times, had "left the public feeling less well-informed than it should be".
Mark Damazer, the deputy director of BBC News, also admitted the BBC had been making mistakes "on a daily basis" during the first week of the Iraq conflict, but denied there was any deliberate bias towards either the pro or anti-war camps.
"I don't deny for a moment that the accumulation of things that have happened in the first week, such as the false claims about the fall of Umm Qasr and the surrender of the Iraqi 51st division, have left the public feeling they are not as well informed as they should be," Damazer said.
"But it's perfectly proper for us to say 'a British defence source has said there's an uprising in Basra' and not report it as gospel truth. We attribute wherever possible to a source. The secret is attribution, qualification and scepticism," he added. (Albawaba.com)
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