A small but perfectly formed example of bias against smoking over at The BBC which I noticed this evening.

On the “England” news page we have the following seletion of article headlines (relevant one highlighted) :

Now, anyone with bansturbatory tendencies would immediately become overwhelmed by feelings of righteousness after seeing that – damned smokers murdering children with their filthy habit.

Ban it!

Ban it now!

Somethign must be done!!

*waves shroud wildly*

Ahem.

And, they probably would not have even looked at the article itself as they know exactly what it is going to say.

Or do they?

Here is a grab of the article itself (available here) with a little more highlighting to make my point :

There is something of a gulf between those ‘most likely’ lines and the  ’caused’ mentioned in the original headline link I think.