Facts? You can prove anything with facts!

Professor Justin Lewis of the Cardiff School of Journalism, on the results of a study into people's attitudes towards reporting of the war:

Despite the recent row about the BBC's coverage, the survey suggests that the BBC is still widely regarded as having been the most trusted source of information during the war. When asked "Which media outlet gave the best, most informed coverage?", 47% chose BBC news - far and away the most popular choice, with more than four times the support for ITV news (10%). This contradicts much of the conventional wisdom that the BBC did not have "a good war". For BBC news to be chosen by nearly half the population in a multimedia environment after all the recent bad publicity suggests that its reputation has remarkable depth and breadth.

Among the also-rans, Sky news does well, chosen by 12.5%. The tabloid press is read by 45% of the survey but chosen as the best source by only 6%. And the internet is chosen by a measly 0.2%.

Despite the criticism of the BBC, the government might be surprised to learn that the BBC is rated the best news source by both supporters and opponents of the war. Those who preferred Sky, on the other hand, are three times more likely to be war supporters than war sceptics.

If we are seeing partisanship common in the press creeping into broadcasting, the study suggests that this is coming not from the BBC, but from Rupert Murdoch's Sky. While Murdoch's Sun has a different audience (more male, less upscale), its readers also have a conspicuously pro-war profile. Mirror readers in the survey are mostly in the anti-war camp, and even the pro-war Mail has more anti-war than pro-war readers - yet Sun readers who still support the war outnumber opponents by more than two to one.

Indeed, only 30% of Sun readers - who have been informed by a sustained anti-BBC campaign - said they felt the BBC coverage was "impartial and objective", compared to an average of 45%, making them more anti-BBC than any other newspaper readers.