When Susan Robertson claimed that they had only blocked the “URL that contains the page. the image” (her last line), my first thought was that she had just plainly lied on the Today programme.

When I had a look online, it appears I was right, she did lie, and much more is blocked than just the image itself (which isn’t even effectively blocked).

It always annoys me when people get away with lying on the Today programme, but this time it particularly annoyed me, as there has been no apology for it from the IWF.

It seems like a major snafu on the part of the IWF, and they’re tyring to save face rather than admitting that they errored that they didn’t expect to get called on.

You came across as well read, having done your research and consistent. Unlike the IWF.

Funny thing. I used to be a Wikipediaholic but since the birth of my son I hardly get the time any more. I’d just finished feeding him this morning when I turned on the TV and .. bored of BBC Breakfast decided to see what they were talking about on Radio 4 (channel 0104 on Sky). I never normally do that! I joined the programme while Ms Robertson was initially being questioned by Naughtie. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known about this situation. I’m on Be internet and its blocked for me.

It might be worth pointing out in your interviews that the Wikipedia page is viewable on Google’s cache (presumably yahoo etc too), and the Wayback machine, and the image itself is visible at a much higher resolution using a simple Google image search.

The IWF’s action, even if justified appears to be incompetent, because it hasn’t stopped anyone seeing the image and it has just given the image more publicity.

You might want to look at the BBC’s technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones’s blog – http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/12/wikipedia_is_censored.html – I left a comment myself just after 10am.

I’ll be tuning in for Channel 4 News.

Good luck.

(Should I confess at this point that I’d barely heard of the Today show and was only told its significance after I’d booked the appearance? Or will they deport me?)