Hold the front page. I agree with Jack Straw on something.

Newsreaders "prancing around studios" gets on my goat too. What benefit is there in this new craze for choreographed news presentation? None that I can see. It's a needless distraction. If I had my way, all newsreaders who behave like hyperactive children should be proscribed a dangerously high level of ritalin. Maybe that'd keep them sitting still for half an hour. Bah. It wasn't like that in my day, I tells you.

Straw couldn't possibly utter more than a few sentences without saying something ridiculously hypocritical though. Here we go:

"On the issue of accuracy, all journalists, including the BBC, have a responsibility to ensure that quotations are attributed accurately."

Oh dear. At least he had the good sense not to suggest that government should behave the same way. Because we know they don't. Just ask Ibrahim al-Marashi, the original but unattributed author of much of the government's "dodgy dossier".

The government's lack of ethical standards isn't going to stop Jack demanding that others adhere to higher standards. In Blair's brave new world, it's the government's right to insist that everyone else lives up their responsibilities. We, on the other hand, appear to have no right to insist that they keep to theirs. They have rights. We have responsibilities.

Tags: News, Politics, Media