Miliband can say "I don't know"

This was interesting on the BBC NEWS | The Editors blog:

In an interview with Jeremy, the Foreign Secretary David Miliband took exception to a figure we had quoted in a piece about UK companies' investment in Burma. He also admiited - and this is a rarity for a politician - that he didn't know the answer to one of Jeremy's questions, and promised to clear up both points by posting something on our website.

I've often thought politicians should feel comfortable saying "I don't know, I'll follow that up." Not least because it opens the debate out to include the rest of us, away from the sterile me-versus-you format of TV debate. As the BBC editors go on to say:

The next day the FCO duly sent through a statement confirming that the figure we'd used was out of date. Then the Burma campaign group sent us a statement taking a dim view of the FCO's clarification. Viewers piled in too, demanding and debating the answers, while the programme producer responsible for the piece went online to direct the traffic.

Now go and look at the sequence of statements on the Newsnight site itself. It's very sterile, very "corporation shall speak unto corporation," but it is a start, and a very interesting one.

One small gripe: can't someone at the BBC do something about the URL http://bbc.co.uk/newsnight resolving to a 403? Shouldn't that be a URL that works?