The Blue Peter cat deception has been getting a lot of media attention today. I happened to turn on Newsround this afternoon and it was the lead item. It was fascinating to watch how they dealt with it.
The story was treated like a massive political scandal. Po-faced presenters said sentences like "the name chosen, Cookie, was ignored for reasons that are unclear." There was an interview with a chastened-looking head of CBBC, in which the anchor asked "How are children supposed to trust CBBC now?" and the head replied that they had made only 3 mistakes in 3 years, although "that is clearly 3 mistakes too many". It was brilliant. The number of entirely confused children across the UK must have been huge.
Essentially it's a tiny version of the David Kelly scandal. I just hope that Socks isn't discovered next week face down in the Blue Peter pond. Then we'd have to have the equivalent of the Hutton Report. Perhaps conducted by Gordon the Gopher.
The strangest thing about this whole story is why they changed the name in the first place. My only thought is that they felt that the name "Cookie" wasn't promoting a healthy diet. In which case I'm surprised they didn't end up calling the cat "Salad".
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