The BBC exemplified the declining journalistic standards that have ushered in this era's liberal bias with the stunning headline "Penguin murders prompt sniper aid". It is not until the third paragraph that the reader is told that the "murderers" are, ahem, dogs and foxes.

The mutilated bodies of the animals, known as fairy penguins, were found in a national park near Sydney harbour.

The main suspects are dogs and foxes. At 40cm tall, the world's smallest penguin species is clearly no match for such aggressive enemies.

The main suspects? Mutilated bodies? Murder? Ridiculous as it may seem we have seen this sort of exaggeration  increase over time as environmentalists become more desperate to get their message out. It is a strategy designed to equate the deaths of animals with that of humans; going so far as to classify the natural predatory nature of dogs and foxes as murder. Such stunts are all the more alarming when they are allowed to occur as a headline within the pages of a major mainstream media news organization.

Apparently someone at the BBC has had second thoughts because the headline changed as I wrote this post, but not before I took a screenshot. The new headline has replaced the term "murders" with "deaths". Too late though as the original headline has already propagated across the internet in its original intended form.

I have been inundated with messages on Facebook asking me to sign the petition to stop the senseless slaughter of innocent wolves in Alaska. I wonder, will the same sort of fury will be brought upon the heads of the penguin bodyguards since they are not under the damning thumb of Sarah Palin?

Professional snipers have been brought in to guard a vulnerable colony of penguins in Australia.

[..]

To even up the fight, two snipers have been deployed as bodyguards.

They have started night patrols and have instructions to do what it takes to protect these tiny creatures. 

Never would an editor of most mainstream media outlets allow such terms to be applied to non-liberal causes such as the opposition to abortion. Vulnerable penguins is another story altogether.

This sort of reporting, small as the incident may be, is the sort that allows bias to become more acceptable; creeping in one word at a time.

Terry Trippany is The Watcher at Watcher of Weasels. The post has been updated to fix a typo in the second to last paragraph.