Whilst I read the BBC news site regularly, their standard of journalism usually causes my blood pressure to rise due to its sloppy and lowest common denominator approach to writing.

This article, for example, is representative of their slack practices.

Firstly, we have this remark stated as fact with no link, citation or source :

The partly enclosed Baltic Sea is known as one of the most polluted seas in the world.

Known to who exactly? State your fucking source or at least provide a link ffs.

Then this statement :

And after years of untreated waste from Russia’s cities and heavy industries, scientists say that the Baltic is in danger of becoming a dead sea.

Who are these scientists? Where is the evidence? Why single out Russia (apart from it being convenient to the story) when the Baltic sea has many more countries with much more adjoining coastline than Russia has – see graphic below with Russia on the right (image created by Norman Einstein, May 25, 2006 via wikipedia)

This kind of publishing diarrhea (sloppy shite in other words) is a great example of the dumbed down journalism which fills peoples heads with quick quotes but doesnt allow further investigation of the issue at hand or the engagement of critical thought on behalf of the reader. It would also seem to me that a large amount of reporting on Global Warming also falls under the same category in which any comment can be dressed up as solid fact by using the adjunct “scientists say”.

Mouldering jam rag contains more intelligent lifeforms than BBC news website, scientists say.

I could get used to this I think.