Business as usual

Even I, ever the cynic, did a double-take when I saw this headline on BBC News:

Katrina prompts charity not change

[...] The real question - putting it baldly - is whether there is going to be a revolution.
Will the American social and economic system - which creates the wealth that pays for billionaires' private jets, and the poverty which does not allow for a bus fare out of New Orleans - be addressed?

What?! I didn't know the BBC had become Schroeder's mouthpiece. See Instapundit's roundup. Incredibly even NPR's ombudsman was moved to comment on the BBC's bias and lack of taste:

I am sure that the BBC is not inventing these interviews. But the effect is that it sounds less like reporting than like caricature. Public radio listeners likely understand what is going on -- that BBC cultural assumptions about the United States remain mired in a reflex European opposition to American foreign policy. But what comes through the radio sounds mean-spirited and not particularly helpful; it probably evokes knowing glances and smirks among editors and producers back in London.

I say abolish the BBC licence fee - European media need more competition!