ABSTRACT
When United States aircraft began using Turkey's Incirlik airbase to launch raids against Iraq, the BBC reported the fact thus: ‘we can tell you that 36 aircraft took off from the base laden with bombs and later returned without them’. The assumption of course was that the aircraft were raiding Iraq, but because the BBC reporter standing outside the gates of Incirlik had not seen the aircraft actually drop the bombs, nor had there been any official statement to that effect, the BBC felt constrained to report only the bare facts. If Incirlik had been the Australian airbase at Darwin, and I had been the BBC reporter, I could also have reported such an event, but if I had been an accredited correspondent given full access to the base, it is doubtful whether I could report how many aircraft took off, or at what time.
