Taking the Lipstick off the Pig

EDINBURGH--Rod Liddle edited what was at the time maybe the best news broadcast in the world, BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, and he left before the Murdoch-and-Blair-generated uproar over that broadcast's report, ad-libbed at 6 in the morning, that the government had "sexed up" the intelligence in its dossier promoting the Iraq war. (Ironically, in the infamous Downing Street Memo, John Dearlove, onetime head of Britain's MI5 intelligence service, asserted that the prewar intel was "fixed" to suit the war policy).

All that recent history aside, Liddle wrote this piece on Sunday asking why the profession of reading the news on TV requires a post-graduate education. Some of the local references may escape you, but the larger point might resonate with cable news viewers in the U.S., too.