BBC Accuracy

O'Reilly's tirades against the BBC as an anti-American threat because they tempered their coverage of the London attacks, has inspired Roger Mosey, head of BBC Television, to write and article of explanation.

The BBC's "liberal" slant in their coverage?

We will not report mere rumour and nor will we run casualty figures, as the most obvious example, without being able to verify them. At times last Thursday we were seeing other news sources running figures well above any official estimates, and in some cases those reports exceed the known death toll today. That isn't the way the BBC operates, so on very rare occasions our information will be "later" than some of our rivals: accuracy is more important than speed, though we want to achieve both.

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We are never immune from accusations of bias. It goes without saying that there is nothing more sensitive than matters of life and death, and the BBC's audience response has been massively supportive and understanding about the dilemmas we face in reporting terror. There have been two main exceptions. From a smattering of radical websites comes the argument that we are being hypocritical in mourning the dead of London when we allegedly gloried in civilian deaths in Iraq.

This utterly misrepresents the BBC's reporting of Iraq, where we have always sought to portray the whole picture of events in that country. The second exception is principally Fox News in the United States. A contributor to Fox said after the London bombings that "the BBC almost operates as a foreign registered agent of Hezbollah and some of the other jihadist groups". On the Fox website today there is an opinion piece, "How Jane Fonda and the BBC put you in danger". I am writing this in a building which was bombed by Irish terrorists. My colleagues and I are living in a city recovering from the wounds inflicted last week. If I may leave our customary impartiality aside for a moment, the comments made on Fox News are beneath contempt.

But O'Reilly, don't forget, was "over there in Europe" last week when the bombings occured, so he knows everything about the the reactions and needs of the British people, and how toe BBC is underserving them.

He's got it all figured out.