Admired the unfree world over.

If I were to have to guess at the BBC's most favoured phrases I'd likely include a phrase (or phrases) such as 'internationally recognised'.

This is a sad comment on the BBC's aggrandisement and ignorance. It may actually be that the BBC's taste for transnationalist boosting trumps its better judgement, but it amounts to the same thing.

The fact that we have to cope with is that the world is not free, the press of the world is not free; in reality the BBC has very little competition, such are the advantages of freedom, finance and history stacked in their favour. Phillip Chaston has written a very worthwhile item at Samizdata where he describes how, at the BBC, 'the writings of Comrade Bob's mouthpiece, a Chinese journalist who writes only what his masters want to hear and a reporter protected by the First Amendment are presented as equally valid to the reader'.

There is also the trouble that, even where democratic systems and free speech exist, and even where there are traditions of their existence, democracy is more democratic, and free speech is freer, in some countries than in others. Helen at EU Ref. helps demonstrate this, and refers us to this example of our glorious international media.

What's at stake in our modern era is whether we retain and extend the standards of journalism which the BBC have fed off for generations, and now use to queen it at the head of the 'international media', or whether we descend to the propagandist standards which prevailed so widely in the 20th century, with such awful effects.