Chris

I think the BBC left Job's comforters in charge of the newsdesk overnight. At 7am today the intro paragraph to the story described the Oxford results as 'a triumph and a disappointment' and only much further down did it discuss the findings that a certain dosage regime could result in 90% efficacy. It almost entirely ignored the fact that 70% is itself in absolute terms an unqualified triumph for a newly developed vaccine of this type.

The word 'disappointment' vanished from the top of the story by around 8.30am and now the headline itself has dropped '70%' and simply talks in terms of it being 'highly effective'. The nearest it gets to expressing disappointment is in para 3: "The results will be seen as a triumph, but also come off the back of Pfizer and Moderna showing 95% protection."

I think someone at BBC News very badly wanted this to be a dramatic failure, or at least a poor second best. I suspect that there have been a few irritated phone calls from actual experts to the news room this morning asking them what the hell they think they're trying to do, talking down something that could be almost as effective as either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, at a fraction of the cost or complexity.

"Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story," my own news editor used to say, with his tongue at least partially in his cheek. Sadly it looks like the BBC Newsdesk thinks it's a motto for life.

---------- Post added at 11:07 ---------- Previous post was at 10:57 ----------

Ah, deontological ethics ... don't get me started

I think that sort of rule-based ethics creates more problems than it solves personally.