WAR ON IRAK: PROPAGANDA WATCH

BBC: US-UK Military War Misinformation Said "Worst Ever' - BBC

BBC news chiefs have met to discuss the increasing problem of misinformation coming out of Iraq as staff concern grows at the series of premature claims and counter claims by military sources.

As a result the corporation has reinforced the message to correspondents that they must clearly attribute information to the military when it has not been backed up by another source.

"There's been a discussion about attribution and it's been reinforced with people that we do have to attribute military information," said a BBC spokeswoman.

"We have to be very careful in the midst of a conflict like this one to be very sure when we're reporting something we've not seen with our own eyes that we attribute it," she added.

On nearly every day of the war so far there have been reports that could be seen as favourable to coalition forces, which have later turned out to be inaccurate.

Earlier this week there was confusion over whether there had been an uprising in the key southern city of Basra. A British forces spokesman, Group Captain Al Lockwood, said on Thursday there had been a "popular uprising", but this was denied by Iraqi authorities.

By last Sunday the southern Iraqi seaport of Umm Qasr had been reported "taken" nine times, while reports of the discovery of a chemical weapons factory in An Najaf have not been confirmed - just two more examples of the confusion over what is coming out of military sources.

"We're absolutely sick and tired of putting things out and finding they're not true. The misinformation in this war is far and away worse than any conflict I've covered, including the first Gulf war and Kosovo," said a senior BBC news source.