The BBC in action

If anyone doubts that the BBC does its best to appease the government (of the day), take a look at what it did with the story of Lord Bingham's criticism of the illegality of the Iraq war.

PA, which has no axe to grind says:

Legal advice given to Tony Blair prior to the invasion of Iraq was fundamentally "flawed", a former senior law lord has said.

The BBC says something almost identical:

Legal advice given to Tony Blair by the attorney general prior to the Iraq war was fundamentally "flawed," a former law lord has claimed.

So the BBC demotes Lord Bingham and decides that, whether he was a law lord or not, his opinion only has the status of a claim. It systematically seeks to undermine anything that shows the government in a bad light.