The usual wholly dishonest fashion.

BBC Director-General Mark Thompson gives an interview in which he says there was a massive left-wing bias at the corporation when he joined it 30 years ago. How do you think the Sun responded to his revelation?

If you read its article, it makes clear that Thompson was speaking about how the corporation was over a quarter of a century ago. If you just read its leader, well, here's what you'd read:

CONFIRMING what everyone knows, BBC chief Mark Thompson admits the Beeb has been guilty of "massive" Left-wing bias.

He insists impartiality is improving, claiming regular invitations to Coalition leaders prove his point.

Here then is a wonderful example of omitting a vital piece of information to paint a picture of an organisation the Sun's parent company is in direct competition with.

Yes, the BBC invites Tory and Lib Dem chiefs on air.

But it is the contemptuous way they are treated - and above all the failure to report fairly the reasons for the Government's cuts policy - that shows the BBC is as Leftie as ever.

Perhaps there's a hint there to the fact Thompson was referring to the past, if we're being completely fair. Why should we bother to be though when the Sun itself never is? "Failure to report fairly the reasons?" Can that really be anything like an accurate description of this blog by the deputy director-general and head of BBC journalism's Mark Byford detailing the BBC's season of programmes on exactly those cuts?

Why this sudden hand-wringing from Mr Thompson as he is carpeted by No10?

Could it be because the Coalition is looking at the BBC's bills - including his own salary last year of £834,000?

Two can play this game. Why this sudden reporting of Thompson's comments? Could it possibly be because these can be misconstrued, unlike his MacTaggart lecture last Friday, which attacked News International directly and accused Sky of not investing in original British programming? After all, not even the Times last week felt the need to make clear to its readers how Thompson had responded to the rant last year by James Murdoch. Indeed, here's the first possible opportunity for the Murdoch press to strike back at Thompson's impertinence, and it's been taken with both hands, in the usual wholly dishonest fashion.

Spot the deliberate April fool.

As you might have expected, the Sun is outraged by yesterday's decision that Sky must reduce the price at which it sells its sports channels to rival broadcasters:

THE beauty of competition is that YOU decide what to watch on your telly.

Unlike the BBC, no one is forced to pay for Sky TV, part of the company that owns The Sun.

But Labour have decided Sky must hand over its content cheaply to rivals who have never taken Sky's risks to revolutionise TV sport.

Nor made the massive investment that won Sky rights to events like the Premier League and Test cricket.

Sky pays around £1billion a year to UK sports. That will be hit if the firm has to take less for its content.

Labour the party of business? A ragbag of meddling Lefties, more like.

Did you spot the deliberate mistake? No, not that Sky has ever revolutionised anything, but rather the paper's strange decision to blame the Labour party rather than err, Ofcom, the media regulator which actually made the decision. It's doubly strange as the paper's actual report correctly identifies Ofcom as the body behind the ruling.

Undoubtedly this is simply another of the paper's April fools, of which there were a further four, as surely the paper's leader writers wouldn't deliberately blame the government for something that has absolutely nothing to do with them whatsoever. If they had, then the Press Complaints Commission would surely take a dim view of such an egregious lie, coming as it does only days before the election campaign is officially launched. Clearly, the Sun would never try to mislead voters into believing that Labour is threatening their beloved sports on satellite; now that really would be a scandalous, unfounded and certainly libellous allegation.

Editorials filled with fantastical nonsense.

If this blog was to comment on every time a Sun editorial was layered with untruths, let alone half-truths or obfuscation, there'd be a post every single day. Today though the leader writer really seems to have gone out of his/her way to write fantastical nonsense:

THE Prime Minister's silence over the BA strike had become deafening.

So there was an element of damage limitation when Gordon Brown was finally cornered into speaking out against it yesterday.

Mr Brown called the strike unjustified and deplorable.

The Sun agrees. But the PM tried hard not to upset his Unite union paymasters.

Unite has more than 160 Labour MPs onside. Many would love to see the union smash BA.

The election choice could not be clearer.

Vote Labour for industrial anarchy.

This is of course the response from the Tories to the Ashcroft affair: trying to make everyone forget the fact that their chief paymaster over the last decade lied about his tax status and struck a secret deal which allowed him to remain a non-dom even after informing parliament and the then leader of his party that he would pay UK tax on all his earnings. Instead they're focusing on a trade union whose members freely decide to donate, work and support the Labour party as if this is some sort of comparable scandal. How dare a trade union defend and support its members against the working conditions being imposed on them by British Airways? The election campaign was always going to be dirty, but to suggest that a vote for Labour is a vote for industrial anarchy when both Lord Adonis and Gordon Brown have condemned the strike in the strongest possible terms is to treat the paper's readers as idiots. It's equally moronic as it implies that somehow the Conservatives could stop the strike from happening or prevent "industrial anarchy", neither of which there is any indication that they either could or would.

Next:

IF there was a World Cup for abusing public money, the BBC would win every time.

More than 80 Beeb executives and hangers-on will be luxuriating on OUR money in a sumptuous Cape Town hotel.

They are part of a 295-strong Beeb army milking the Cup for all it is worth.

The arrogance of the BBC is out of control.

Hard-up families scrimp to buy a licence so BBC spongers can sip cocktails by the pool of a £636-a-night palace.

The BBC gets away with this because it toadies to Labour.

It might not find the Tories such a soft touch.

Shock horror! National broadcaster in taking workers to World Cup to ensure that they can cover the matches in as much detail as the licence fee payers demand! The BBC of course should not being bidding for the World Cup at all; they ought to leave the rights to Sky so they can provide their award-winning coverage at half the price but at a premium cost to the subscriber. Naturally, it gets away with it because it toadies to Labour; yet another reason to vote Conservative!

And lastly:

THE Government can't stop insulting the memory of James Bulger.

Ed Balls, the Prime Minister's boot boy, says it is WRONG to call Jon Venables and Robert Thompson evil for murdering James.

They were victims of their upbringing, he whines.

It was Mr Balls who appointed Labour stooge Maggie Atkinson as his Children's Commissioner.

She has outraged Denise Fergus, James's mother, by downplaying the murder of her son as "unpleasant."

Was there ever a Government more out of touch with public opinion?

In fact, as the Sun's report makes clear, Balls said that Venables and Thompson were not "intrinsically evil", which is quite different to just describing them as "not evil". Does the Sun then believe that the two are "evil", and not that they just committed a crime that could be described as "evil"? As for Atkinson's comments, it's a case of disagreeing with someone else's opinion, which Fergus seemed to believe that Atkinson should be sacked for expressing, which rather than insulting the memory of the dead child instead seems to show Fergus up as small-minded and intolerant of any opinion different to her own. This is a leader writer pretending to be outraged by a government minister and commissioner not agreeing with them, hence they simply must be out of touch with public opinion, which is always, but always on the Sun's side.

The future of television!

The Sun and Sky are completely separate entities, aren't they? Who could possibly think otherwise? Err, probably everyone, judging by today's completely arslikhan leader on the future of television:

A LUCKY handful saw the future yesterday - and it works!

They were the fans who got into nine pubs around Britain to watch soccer's clash of the giants on 3D Sky television.

The experiment could be just the start. In a few years 2D telly may seem as old-fashioned as the black and white era does today.

Of course, the feeling that you were actually at the match was better for Manchester United fans as their team walloped Arsenal 3-1.

In Manchester they were chanting as the ball whizzed past their beers and into history.

Soon we'll all be singing: "Here 3D Go, Here 3D Go, Here 3D Go!"

Yes, or more likely, we'll have forgotten it within a few years as just another failed gimmick. Still, kind of the Sun to give other space to another Murdoch "innovation", as if it hadn't already hyped up Avatar enough.