Absolutely unbelievable item on the Today programme this morning (0835), which even by the degraded journalistic and moral standards of the BBC was simply marmalade-dropping. The question for discussion was the hoary old chestnut 'what is the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter' in the context of al Q'aeda. To discuss this riveting question, the programme had on what it coyly described as 'prominent figures from the past', which turned out to be none other than Leila Khaled, erstwhile Palestinian plane hijacker, and Danny Morrison, erstwhile Northern Ireland Republican terror detainee.

The result was no less staggering for being so predictable. Both of them declared that the terrorism they supported (which Morrison thought shouldn't be called terrorism at all) was justified while that of al Q'aeda was not. The programme gave them several minutes of prime time to make an unchallenged justification for terrorism. The questioning was pathetic, consisting of mild rebukes which were themselves implicitly morally nihilistic-- sugesting to Khaled that she couldn't just say the US and Israel were guilty of terror without admitting that she had done the same (!!); or when Morrison claimed governments like the US or Britain were guilty of double standards by condeming the killing of innocents while doing the same thing themselves, all the presenter could say was 'but we elect governments'. The fact that there was all the difference in the world between targeting innocents for death and taking action to defend a society against such outrages didn't seem to occur to him.

I kid you not. This is the BBC's idea of balance -- two apologists for terror, in earnest discussion. And this is the orgnisation the public nevertheless still appears to trust and venerates as an icon. Is it any wonder the country is in the grip of so much appeasement, irrationality and ignorance? The fact is that the BBC has become an Augean stables of moral nihilism, responsible in large measure not merely for dumbing down the culture but leading it like lemmings towards a precipice from which it is in increasing danger of committing cultural suicide.