I sniff news - do you?

I have just discovered Newssniffer.co.uk - it monitors BBC feedback and comments and publishes all the stuff that's censored.

There is one particularly interesting thread about NHS reform in which, if I understand it right, a whopping 340 comments were censored and only ONE comment published! If you read the thread (here) you will see that many of the comments are not particularly extreme or prejudiced, they just oppose New Labour's intentions to reform (i.e. privatise) large chunks of the NHS.

One guy even writes:

"My comments have clearly been removed.

I have read the house rules and cannot see where I have contravened them.

So that I dont repeat my mistake, could a moderator please email me and explain what I am guilty of other, unlike the BBC of not being a new labour fan."

This speaks volumes about the BBC's subservience to the government. You wouldn't get such censorship on any large mainstream private media site... or would you?

It's the f*&^ing economy, stupid

I have a radio alarm clock that pings on to Radio 4's Today program each morning. It's probably the least offensive way of being woken up (listening to Chris Moyles at 7am feels like some kind of blunt instrument invading my inner ear, and Radio 3 is so relaxing it fails to wake me) but the other morning the program editors cut off their Kenya correspondent after barely 90 seconds on air, in time for the hourly pips.

Nothing unusual in that, you might say. But the fact that they had spent the previous twenty minutes exploring the minutiae of implications of the previous day's stock market wobble made it clear where the Today program's editorial priorities lie. The possibility that a few city hedge fund managers may have to take a measly £10m bonus instead of their usual end-of-year £18m wedge is clearly deemed more important to listeners than the supposed "model African nation" descending into machete-wielding barbarity.

Is it because they is black?