This article explores the role of trans-editing in constructing knowledge and construing reality. It reveals that the content of "hard" news reports is not simply facts about the world, but rather a kind of knowledge that shapes, and is shaped by, reality according to complex axiological and ideological criteria for selection and transformation of information. Comparing two BBC English and Arabic news reports covering the same event, this article sheds lights on the various overt and covert manifestations of their ideological and attitudinal potential, lurking behind a veneer of "objectivity" and "impartiality" typical of hard news reports.