How can news organisations get things so incredibly wrong?

[Mark]

Up to this lunchtime, News agencies across the country were extolling the virtues of Microwave ovens for killing bugs on kitchen sponges. Here's an example:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...562977,00.html

The BBC even showed a report in which a reporter put a kitchen sponge in a microwave oven and turned it on. Nice move.

By teatime, the story had taken a rather different turn, as this BBC article shows (this is the very same article that at lunchtime was extolling the above virtues - how things change):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6293735.stm

Well duh, of course it's a bloody dangerous idea and someone's already nearly killed themselves trying it. A 'damp' sponge won't contain nearly enough water to absorb the microwaves in a modern oven, so you'll either super-heat the sponge (with the possibility of causing a fire as a result), or slowly cook the microwave oven itself because the microwaves have to go somewhere.

I think this has to be one of the quickest U-turns by the media as a whole ever.

So, what do you think of this, and how much do you trust the media?