BBC Stuck on Stupid

Can you hear me now?

Another priceless stupid media trick, courtesy of the BBC.

The BBC has apologised for adding the sound of babies crying to its footage of quintuplets born to a Russian woman.

The five girls, delivered at an Oxford hospital on November 10, are the latest individuals to be drawn into the broadcasting fakery row.

The John Radcliffe Hospital distributed clips of the five babies and their parents, who defied doctors in Moscow who advised they abort some of the fetuses.

While broadcasters like Sky and ITN ran clips of the footage without the audio, the BBC's footage contains the sound of children crying, even though the babies have respirators in their mouths.

A spokeswoman for the Oxford hospital said: "There was no audio on our clip."

"The BBC must have put it over.

"I thought they weren't supposed to do things like that."

A BBC spokesman said the corporation should have left the footage alone.

He said: "We received the film without sound and on reflection we should have kept it that way."

Idiots.

Also at A Tangled Web.