They certainly are the most polished. And quite influential. (And helpful, too! Did you know, cgod, that in '79 BBC news announced the location of the next day's demonstrations to be held in Iran? Breaking the news, indeed. Yes, that was BBC editorial staff deciding on their own to meddle in international affairs of clear and certain interest to the Crown of England.) "We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy). So if someone has got a recording of our output, I'd love to get hold of it. We do have the tapes for our sister channel News 24, but they don't help clear up the issue one way or another." -- BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/02/part_of_the_co... (Your "output"? Dear BBC News: We want to see the records of your raw feeds for that day as well.) I certainly agree that conspiracy mindedness is a problematic methodology and hardly efficient. It is also, by definition, reactionary. But you apparently do not realize that it is also a legitimate (and very effective) survival strategy in context of a deficit in the quality and quantity of critical information. Being open to the possibility of current conspiracy allows for a consideration of the possible causes and ramifications of the odd fact that "We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy)" is the extent of BBC New's attention to this matter. If I were not receptive, I would dismiss the thought and never bother to devise alternative models. I would very possibly fail to recognize other seemingly independent events that could in fact be connected, and would have far more likely been noted due to the fact that I entertain various models in my head as I process information. Of course it is inefficient. It would have been far better, all things considered, if (for example in this case) BBC News itself had gone out of its way and taken us on a guided tour of their process -- what a great show that would be -- during the course of which we can all breath a sigh of relief and note that it fact BBC News is incompetent or suffered a reasonable system failure. That would lead to efficiency gains all around and really not at all an unreasonable thing to expect from such an 'august' "news organization" that has amply demonstrated that it can wield a highly critical lens on the subject matters of its choosing.