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Check out this story on the BBC website for example.

In my opinion, it's a really bad piece of journalism that offers the reader no real information but creates what may well be a decidedly misleading perception.

Take this quote for example:

"Experts believe the availability of images of children could be encouraging people to commit actual abuse".

What does that tell us?

It tells us that experts don't know whether there's any link between kiddy porn online and actual offending -- but note carefully that it's worded in such a way as to create the perception that a link does exist.

Well if there is a link -- where's the evidence?

Hell, I could publish a story in which I stated "a number of people believe that the increased availability of online pornography is a factor in reducing the incidence of sexual offending" -- and this would be just as meaningless and misleading.

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Even the claim that the Net has produced a 1,500% increase in kiddy porn crimes since 1988 is misleading.

How does anyone know?

Are they telling us that all child-porn crimes are detected, reported and prosecuted? What about all those child-porn crimes that have occurred without the authorities being aware?

I have no doubt that the Net has made it a whole lot easier for people to access kiddy-porn -- but it's also made it a whole lot easier for authorities to detect, track and prosecute offenders.

The article should have stated that Net use has lead to a 1,500% increase in the number of crimes detected or prosecuted.

There is another claim that appears to be unsubstantiated by any formal research: "anyone who looked at child porn had to be considered at least a potential "hands-on" paedophile".

Is there any evidence to support this claim?

I'm sure this is true -- but no truer than this claim: "every person using the Net is a potential paedophile and in the case of men, the potential for offending is even greater"

Without some kind of evidence produced by scientifically conducted study, these types of statements are not too different from the extremist feminist claim that "all men are rapists".

Now let me make it quite clear that I'm not for one minute making a stand on behalf of kiddy-porn merchants or sexual offenders -- but I am really concerned that the media has once again jumped on the bandwagon which makes it so easy to paint the Net as an evil place and refuge of dirty old men in raincoats.

I can't think of one other subject which would produce this type of atrocious journalism by an otherwise reputable news organisation.

It's almost as if the media are saying "we know the public despise kiddy porn so let's ignore all the normal journalistic checks and balances designed to ensure our objectivity."

I have to say that I've lost a great deal of respect for the BBC as a news organisation. A decade or so ago they were extremely good but during my time at 7am.com I noticed a rapid decline in their journalistic standards and objectivity. This decline appears not to have yet been arrested.

If it's subjective, biased, bad reporting people want, they can find that in buckets on the Net. Surely there's no sense in the BBC trying to compete in the tabloid marketplace is there?

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