Tonight the BBC admitted that it has misinformed the international community by telling the world that one of the Danish Muhammad cartoons was a depiction of a pigsnouted Muhammad. The BBC website says:

Twelve cartoons were originally published by Jyllands-Posten. None showed the Prophet with the face of a pig. Yet such a portrayal has circulated in the Middle East (The BBC was caught out and for a time showed film of this in Gaza without realizing it was not one of the 12).

This picture, a fuzzy grey photocopy, can now be traced back (suspicion having been confirmed by an admission) to a delegation of Danish Muslim leaders who went to the Middle East in November to publicise the cartoons. The visit was organised by Abu Laban, a leading Muslim figure in Denmark.

One wonders why the BBC did not check with Jyllands-Posten, and ask them for copies of the original cartoons, before broadcasting the news to a worldwide Muslim audience. One wonders also whether BBC journalists ever consult blogs. The twelve cartoons have been available on the internet for months. Moreover, if the BBC had published the cartoons on its own website – instead of pondering whether or not to show them – and fulfilled its duty as information provider this would not have happened. Perhaps extreme violence and some fatalities could have been avoided.

As we wrote last Saturday:

the venerable BBC – never hesitating to offend prudish Christians – found itself in a “dilemma” when it had to decide whether or not to show prudish Muslims twelve, mostly inoffensive cartoons [see them here, halfway down the page] – so inoffensive in fact that alienated Danish Muslim fanatics had to add three truly offensive cartoons (of their own making?) to deliberately incite Islamic hatred against Denmark.