But the BBC said in a statement that it "strongly condemns this abusive treatment".

"The safety of our staff is our primary concern especially when they are working in such difficult circumstances and it is essential that journalists working for the BBC, or any media organisation, are allowed to report on the situation in Libya without fear of attack," said the statement from Liliane Landor, languages controller of BBC Global News.

"Despite these attacks, the BBC will continue to cover the evolving story in Libya for our audiences both inside and outside the country."

Journalists do this all the time. If they did not we would not know about the atrocities in many countries. I think that the BBC being relevant is a different issue from this incident. The BBC are still relevant from my perspective.

The quality of the online articles is a different issue to the beating up of freelance contractors. While the BBC are trying to appear relevant to the public and politicians these are separate issues. I agree with you that the quality of the websites is poor they are still a lot better than the commercial sites.

But since when do the Beeb make statements like the above? As if saying 'it is essential that journalists working for the BBC, or any media organisation, are allowed to report on the situation in Libya without fear of attack' is remotely realistic - it looks more like attention seeking mixed with PR, compared to the usual statement you'd expect from the BBC about persevering etc.