Hopefully a free Alan Johnston will see the funny side

The internet has been buzzing today with the happy news that Alan Johnston has been freed.

Well, it was happy news to almost everybody, although a few of the curmudgeons of Middle England crept out of their closets on the Daily Mail's site:

"And now for the documentary and books etc..."
- Dave, Leeds, UK

"Isn't Mr. Blair claiming some credit?"
- Dave, France

"Call me a cynic, but what deal was done behind the scenes? If there was one then it just encourages the terrorists to kidnap even more people! We should be told if a deal was done!"
- Thomas, Dubai, U.A.E.

"Hooray! Good for him. Now will the media shut up about him? Especially the BBC!"
- Tony, Oxford, UK

"These people from the BBC only go out there to make trouble in the first place - he is no hero."
- Marianne, Essex

My personal favourite was:

"He shouldn't have been their in the first place. No other news organisation was daft enough to put someone in those circumstances but the BBC thought they'd be safe because of the biased reporting."
- John, Manchester

How right John, he should have just stayed at home and got his news from the television like the rest of us. Oh, hang on a moment...

Kudos to the editors over at Biased BBC who wasted no time in placing a post called "Huzzah!" celebrating the news as well.

"I'm sure I speak for all of BBBC when I say we're very pleased about the release of Alan Johnston."

Thankfully the story had a happy ending, and hopefully Alan will recover sufficiently enough to be able to laugh about a couple of funny things I spotted during the internet campaign for his release.

Shane Richmond at The Telegraph had a button on his blog in support of Alan, which only seemed to draw attention to the fact that they might have been separated at birth.

And a few days back, someone in the BBC News editorial team should really have thought a little harder about the promotional items they were putting into the footer of the page to sit next to their support for the kidnapped journalist.

Posted by Martin Belam, July 4, 2007
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