Tom Gross also flags up a perfect example of the Mark Twain quote that a lie can travel half way round the world before the truth has got its boots on. And it concerns - surprise, surprise - Seymour Hersh and Robert Fisk.

Emmanuel Sivan (professor of Islamic History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) has an analysis in Haaretz of the origins of Hersh's ludicrous allegation that the Bush administration, "embracing realpolitik, was siding with the Sunnis in their conflict with the Shi'ites". This led the administration to cooperate even with those who are hostile toward the United States, including groups linked to Al-Qaida. To back up his claim, Hersh wrote that the United States was transferring funds to the government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, even though it knew some of the money was going to the Palestinian group Fatah al-Islam in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon."

As Sivan continues: Sharp-eyed reporters in Beirut read the article in astonishment. Siniora, of the Lebanese Sunni establishment, was assisting allies of Al-Qaida who had split off from a pro-Syrian organization? And the United States was aware of this and might even be planning it, in order to strike at Hezbollah? And all this was in the context of aid to the Sunni forces in the Middle East in their conflict with Shi'ites backed, according to Hersh, by Iran? A world turned on its head. How could it be?

But it was published in The New Yorker, a magazine known for its meticulous fact-checking. The Lebanese reporters began investigating the story on their own.

And guess what they came up with: Hersh said he heard the story from Robert Fisk, the bureau chief of The Independent's Beirut office. But Hersh did not check out the story himself. For his part, Fisk said he heard the unconfirmed report from Alastair Crooke, a former British intelligence agent and the founding director and Middle East representative of the Conflicts Forum, a non-profit organization that aims to build a new relationship between the West and the Muslim world. Crooke, who gained his reputation through his involvement in the conflict in northern Ireland, does not know Arabic. When Lebanese journalists spoke to Crooke about the report, they said he told them only that he had heard it "from all kinds of people."

I think the trio of Hersh, Fisk and Crooke might best be termed an axis of bias.

I've just noticed the Melanie Phillips also recounts this story. So it's even more appropriate that i point you to her recent post about Crooke, and the BBC's use of him and others of his view. Taking the Hersh story and the BBC's recent coverage together, they're object lessons in how Twain's phrase is even more true today than it was in his own time.