Given the appalling "shock and awe" tactics employed by the US-led forces this evening in the miltary campaign, I thought I'd bring this comment from Dunc into a more prominent position:

Driving home from work today I was listening to the CNN Radio reporting and I heard:

"there have been what they're calling 'explosions'"
"these missile attacks have been amazing"
"from here the missiles are amazing"
"the attacks are growingly intense"
"it's like shooting ducks in a barrel"

...all from CNN/US Media people...

From a guy from ITN with a double-barrelled name (so you can be sure he's British) we got:

"...the intensity of the noise of explosions is frightening, we're having to duck under windows to aviod the possibility of being hit by shrapnel and shard of glass"

Okay, not commenting on the CNN people, you guys can do that, but as far as I'm concerned the ITV guy is the only one of them actually reporting...I know the BBC are too, but getting BBC reports on US independent radio is really difficult.

You usually have to listen to National Public Radio for our people, but it must be very difficult to avoid using sensational language when you're that close to the action, and not all your examples of what the US media have said are that extraordinary. Apart from my experience with the Manchester bomb, I've never had to operate in a hostile environment.

Using language like "amazing" and "intense" is understandable as long as you're only using it for colour, and not in place of detail. Hopefully our reporters are being a little more circumspect.

"Shooting ducks in a barrel" is pretty rotten and biased, though, even though I find the mixing of metaphors highly amusing. After all, isn't it usually fish that get shot in barrels?

Mind you, you don't need to worry about CNN eyewitness reports until the end of the war - Saddam's regime kicked them out tonight. Their alleged crime? Being a mouthpiece for anti-Iraq propaganda. This, presumably, unlike the latest "true" reports from Iraqi state radio that the "forces of aggression" have been retreating today.

Funnily enough, CNN.com isn't majoring on the expulsion story. The only mention I could find was about 25 pars into their top story. I've a feeling that if the same were to happen to the BBC, they wouldn't be afraid to bring it to people's attention.

(All opinions are my own and not those of the BBC)