Steven has written enough about how easy it is for bloggers and publishers to have a dig at Microsoft whenever they want a few cheap page views but I honestly expected better from such a respected news outlet as the BBC.

My good wife emailed me the following screenshot, from Google News, of today’s BBC coverage of the recent Skype outage. The email subject was: “Misleading headline”.

Notice anything about that? The headline clearly lays the blame at the of Windows (Microsoft) and is beyond misleading.

For most people who just skim the headlines the message is clear. Windows is to blame for the Skype outage, not Skype.

Those few people who dare to click through to the actual story will be face with a different headline. A headline that is more appropriate and accurate:

The story itself also clarifies that the actual problem was a bug in the 5.0.0.152 version of Skype which runs on Windows, which is more in line with Skype’s official explanation. It was not and never was a Windows problem.

This irks me. It vexes me and quite frankly, pisses me off to no end. I’m not a Microsoft fanboy. I disagree with Steven more often than not and am the first to slap Microsoft down when they are in the wrong, but one thing I do want to see, for all companies, is fair and honest reporting.

The BBC doesn’t need to use, and shouldn’t be sinking to level of using linkbait headlines in order to prop up pageviews of it’s tech section. The BBC should be above that.

If the beeb really can’t get by without practicing link baiting then, at the very least, they can lay the blame where it belongs and stop taking cheap shots at Microsoft and others.

Update: Via twitter the BBC’s Jon Fildes has stated that the headline was simply an error and has been fixed.  Thanks for getting that sorted Jon.

[Cross-posted at Winextra]