³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

It has been the News website's practice for a number of years to use the spelling "Taleban" in preference to the alternative "Taliban".

Neither version is wrong - what you come up with depends on which system of transliteration is used from the Arabic script. At the time we established our style, there was no consensus.

However, in recent years, a growing number of news outlets including Reuters, Associated Press, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post have all adopted "Taliban".

So too have institutions such as the United Nations and the US and UK governments. Indeed, the movement usually refers to itself as the "Taliban" when it uses English.

Further evidence of the emerging dominance of "Taliban" can be found through Google. Readers who use the search engine to look for "Taliban" will find well over 20 million references, while "Taleban" scores only about 1.25 million.

For these reasons, we have decided to switch our spelling to "Taliban" and other parts of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News operation have done the same.

The decision did create a potential problem with the website archive, but our technical team has come up with a solution which we hope will prove satisfactory. The two versions have been combined into one set of results, so that users entering "Taliban" or "Taleban" will get a list of results which should retrieve all the relevant articles. We have also altered the spelling in some important articles, .

Adam Curtis is the head of editorial standards, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Newsroom.

Back in February, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News website published a story about a after being discovered having what can probably best be described as improper relations with the beast.

Village elders ruled that he could keep the goat, but would have to pay a $50 dowry to the owner.

This undeniably quirky tale was confirmed for us by the editor of a local newspaper which had carried the report. The editor is a trusted ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ stringer.

The story attracted much interest and amusement at the time, but was soon consigned to the archive.

However, last week there were some bizarre developments. That goat report was consistently showing up in our "live stats" box as the most widely e-mailed story on the site.

The story was even picked up (as if new) by the soaraway .
It had not been re-published, re-written or revised. So how is it that upwards of 100,000 people a day were passing it on to their friends and acquaintances?

Or could it be that some crazed animal lover has been repeatedly hitting the site with fake requests?

We put our senior software engineer Gareth Owen on the case. His verdict is unequivocal. The demand was genuine.

During a single morning, the goat story was e-mailed by readers in Australia, France, Sweden, the US, Luxembourg, India, Malaysia, Tanzania, Estonia and many other countries.

Do a search on Google for "goat and marry" – and the story is everywhere. It even gets a mention in Wedding Ideas magazine.

It seems to be a fine example of the viral nature of the web. A story is picked up and passed on to an ever growing circle of readers – a sort of chain letter in cyberspace.

Only now are there signs that the interest may be abating. For the moment at least, the story is no longer registering as one of the most popular on the website.

But the experience has inevitably raised questions about whether we should do a follow up. Should we perhaps find out if the relationship is still flourishing? And what about the kids?

News developments in the Middle East routinely attract the attention of vigorous lobby groups on both sides. The conflict that has erupted so suddenly in Lebanon is no exception.

We are accused of all sorts of twists and spins, such as: "Why do we say that Lebanese have 'died', but that Israelis have 'been killed'?" Or: "Why do you focus on the suffering of Israelis when the Lebanese are suffering in greater numbers?" Or: "Why do you paint the Lebanese as victims when it's their failure to disarm Hezbollah that lies at the root of the trouble?" Or: "Why don't you state openly that the Israeli bombing/Hezbollah rocket attacks are war crimes?"

Readers with strong views about the rights and wrongs of the conflict sometimes read into our coverage a bias or prejudice that is not there. The accusations come from both sides.

The truth is that, in maintaining 24-hour a day coverage of a complex, fast-moving story such as this - constantly updating and reshaping our reports - it is a huge challenge to ensure that we are maintaining absolute balance and impartiality. Undoubtedly, there are times when we don't get it quite right. But we do pay attention to feedback, and we do make adjustments when it seems right to do so.

One of the most difficult issues surrounds the pictures that we use to illustrate our news stories. We come under pressure from some quarters to publish photographs that reflect the full horror of the casualties being inflicted. Such images certainly exist and are freely available on a number of websites.

Our job, as we see it, is to make a judgement about what our audience is likely to feel is appropriate. On the one hand, we do not believe in sanitising the news. On the other, we believe we have the ability, through our reporting, to convey the horror of events without shocking and possibly outraging our readers by showing gruesome images of mutilated corpses.

On occasions we are aware that we come close to crossing the line as to what is acceptable. In such circumstances, we may, like our colleagues in television, adopt the policy of warning our readers that the images they are about to see are likely to be distressing.

But what if the available images of casualties on one side are more harrowing than those on the other? And should we publish more pictures of Lebanese casualties because there are more of them?

In practice, we look at the agency pictures available at any one time and publish a selection that we feel reflects reality. We have no agenda other than to give our readers as accurate a sense as we can of what is happening on the ground.

In doing so, we take note of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ guideline on impartiality, which says in part: "It requires us to be fair and open minded when examining the evidence and weighing all the material facts, as well as being objective and even handed in our approach to a subject. It does not require the representation of every argument or facet of every argument on every occasion or an equal division of time for each view."

Adam Curtis is world editor of the