It was an unexpected surprise to see that a UK government minister slammed the New Statesman for publishing Ken Livingstone's "exclusive" fawning Q&A with Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal.
Foreign office minister Ivan Lewis says the New Statesman essentially gave Mashaal a "propaganda coup to the leader of a terrorist organization."
Swedish government officials could learn a lot from their British counterparts. When Aftonbladet published a far shoddier piece of discredited journalism — accusing Israel of stealing Palestinian organs — Israel asked the Swedish government to condemn the report.
Instead, the Swedes dug in their heels on the principle of free speech. In the process, they retracted their own ambassador to Israel's relatively mild criticism of Donald Bostrom's report, removing Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier's comments from the Swedish foreign ministry web site.
When you get right down to it, with both papers, free speech isn't really the core issue. Had Bostrom and Livingstone's writings been posted on private blogs, neither article would have received any meaningful attention. There are enough two-bit conspiracy theories and Hamas apologists competing for online traffic.
But respectable news services have a responsibility to publish news, not propaganda. And it's not just for reasons of ethical journalism (though there's plenty to say about that too). Aftonbladet, and now the New Statesman, are now on a slippery slope of peddling trash that badly stains their own images of being credible sources for news and commentary.
At least in the UK, government officials can call a spade a spade.
