Just look at the above, taken from the BBC News app this morning.

Wikipedia has an explanation of what is going on which actually references the BBC as an example:

Example 2:

Kazakhstan’s famous “130-year-old”—Headline on BBC News web site

The quotation marks around 130-year-old indicate that the news source is reporting but not endorsing the claim.

…however if you dig into the news you find that a guy shot himself in the head, live on TV after a car-chase.

In my book that’s pretty clearly a suicide without room for equivocation. Do perhaps the BBC believe that Fox News staged it with a sniper?

Was Paypal hit by technical problems, or perhaps an earthquake? Nope, reading it, it sounds pretty technical to me.

Similarly, not quoted above, is:

Somalia Islamists ‘leave Kismayo’ amid AU attack

…and you have to ask: WELL, HAVE THEY OR HAVEN’T THEY?

Do the BBC not know the facts?

If the facts are known then why are they not reported, as opposed to ‘reported’?

And atop all of this confusion is flipping between single and double quotes:

…one moment it’s a debatable concept and the next it’s a quotation.

Having become annoyed enough to research and write this posting I find that I am not alone:

China Post:

‘Scare quotes’ having a ‘field day’ in the ‘media’

I realize that not all readers in Taiwan, even native English speakers, know what a scare quote is. The dictionary defines them as quotation marks placed around words or phrases to put a distance between the writer and the word, as if he or she is saying: “I don’t really use that word.” Examples are when conservatives put scare quotes around “gay marriage,” implying that it is not really marriage, or when liberals put scare quotes around “Romney’s compassion,” implying that Mitt Romney lacks compassion.

I also had never heard of the “scare quotes” term before this summer. I had to look it up in the dictionary and one in Wikipedia, too. But it’s now become so embedded in popular culture in both America and Britain that you cannot pick up a newspaper these days without seeing the scare quotes epidemic in action. With the American election campaign in full swing, scares quotes are having a field day.

…which is worth a read; but in conclusion I have a very simple plea.

Dear BBC, if you are reporting a fact, please put all of your weight behind it, or cite a quotation, or find something else to say.

Footnote: I am half-inclined to blame Have I Got News For You and their watered-down “…Allegedly” running joke in reference to anything that might get them sued.