To bleep or not to bleep, that is the f***ing question

Nothing undermines the mature and serious nature of a newspaper more than the habit of starring or dashing out swearing.

It is a device used to great effect by The Beano who in my days as a reader would use strings of characters such as "#@$!*!" to suggest Dennis has pushed his dad too far this time and caused Mr The Menace to say something unprintable.

But does it make sense that what's good for The Beano should be good for The Sunday Telegraph?

The closing quote - a major point of lasting impact for an article - from an interview with a clearly rattled Manchester United manager today ended with Alex Ferguson describing claims from Liverpool's Rafa Benitez as (look away now if you're easily shocked... by lame editorial decisions):

"--------, absolute --------."

Now, I think that might be 'bollocks', or possibly 'bullshit'.

But perhaps Ferguson was going off-piste with something more creative, like 'cockwash'. Or maybe he was calling Benitez a 'shithead' or 'cocknose'.

The point I'm slightly childishly making is that if The Sunday Telegraph thought it newsworthy, isn't it important to report the words as they were spoken? Isn't this crucial to journalism?

Yesterday's Guardian thought it front-page-newsworthy that Jeremy Clarkson had, for two weeks running during the filming of Top Gear, called Prime Minister Gordon Brown "a cunt". It probably is newsworthy given Clarkson's role as influential bellwether of the right wing masses.

So having decided to run the story, the Guardian published the word, because the use of the word was the story. To star it out would have been to mislead and patronise the audience.

Update: The Observer also ended a similar article to The Sunday Telegraph's with the same Ferguson quote, using it unedited and benefiting therefore from its impact. If you're interested and up to the shock, it turns out Ferguson, not for the first time, was talking "bollocks, absolute bollocks".

Will Sturgeon is director of media strategy at LEWIS PR and a former editor of silicon.com. He also blogs at sturgeonslaw.blogspot.com.