I refer to the letter Proper divide between BBC, British gov't .

I'm pleased to note that the BBC is keeping up to date with the alternative media, but would ask Jonathan Kent to reconsider (or perhaps to consider for the first time) his rose-tinted view of his own employer. As is the way with mainstream journalists, he conveniently ignores the substance of the criticisms and sets up straw men to burn.

For example, nowhere did I suggest that an RTM journalist would get away with damning the government live on air - duh! I'm not sure where his sarcastic comments about the lack of an independent judiciary in Malaysia came from (as if the Hutton and Butler reports were uninfluenced by political pressure) but they are also typical of a pervasive and condescending attitude to non-Western countries.

This response is not surprising; in fact, it's standard operating practice among corporate journos, because if he viewed the world any differently - perhaps with a touch of self-reflection, empathy or compassion - he would soon find himself looking for alternative employment.

However, it's ironic (and ill-advised) for him to fight his corner by citing the Hutton 'investigation' into the Dr Kelly 'suicide' case, which was originally sparked by his BBC colleague, Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan's intemperate (and wholly vindicated) observation that the Iraq invasion dossier may have been 'sexed up' by the government took place on BBC radio at 6.00 in the morning (hardly prime time).

He might also recall that Gilligan was subsequently sacked for his independence of thought, presumably to remind other BBC reporters about what happens when you stray too far from official orthodoxy. So much for open (or even mildly critical) reporting!

For those of you interested in this sort of thing, I refer you again to numerous media studies of the performance of mainstream TV news in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion that show the BBC to be the most pro-government broadcaster in the UK. And that's despite robust competition from Rupert Murdoch's Sky News. It's interesting that Kent "remembers working day in day out interviewing Malaysians of all shades for opinions about the impending conflict and putting them on the BBC," because the actual record tells a very different story.

A tiny fraction (4% according to the Glasgow report) of the people interviewed on the BBC about the impending war were dissenting voices. People like Scott Ritter and Hans Blix (ie, people who actually knew about Iraq's non-existent WMD) were drowned out by a parade of paid pundits who were in no doubt about the need to remove the dictator before he set about destroying 'our values'.

I'd be happy to share 'whatever it is I'm smoking' with Kent (Benson or Dunhill for the most part) provided he's willing to dish out some of the happy pills that enable him to function so effectively inside the 'machine'. Fair's fair.