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There is crisis at the BBC in London. As some commentators would
have us believe, the end of British media freedom as we know it…
The BBC’s Director-General and its Chairman have both resigned
following the Hutton report on the death of the weapons expert
David Kelly — something that’s never happened before
in the Corporation’s 82-year existence.
There is much doom-laden commentary in the London press about
a perceived government victory in a war against free speech, about
the inevitable demise of hard-hitting investigative journalism.
Emotions are running very high — one newspaper commentator
speaks of an incandescent red mist descending.
But let’s stop for a moment and consider what Lord Hutton
actually said — and remember (as we always teach in the
context of the Dart agenda on journalism and trauma) how judgement
can get clouded when emotions are running high.
A government had been accused of taking the country to war on
the basis of a lie and a deceit. A man exposed as the source —
assuming he did actually say what was reported — died, tragically,
at his own hand.
This was not just the journalism of thrilling scoops and getting
one over the opposition. This was a story that reflected and led
to personal tragedy, and which went to the heart of what should
in any democracy be a compact of trust between government and
the governed.
In other words, it was ultimately about good and responsible
journalism — the respectful and accurate reporting of war,
its preparation and its consequences.
Hutton indeed had damning words to say about the original broadcast
on the BBC’s Today Programme by Andrew Gilligan —
whom Hutton considered a particularly unreliable witness.
Gilligan’s first early morning report had been live, unscripted,
in parts awkwardly phrased, and contained two extremely serious
allegations which have proved — whatever Kelly did or didn’t
tell Gilligan at their meeting in June 2003 — quite simply
wrong.
These allegations were:
— That the British government put material
into the infamous dossier on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction
probably knowing it to be wrong (in other words, that Downing
Street had lied in order to persuade the country to go to war);
— and, that Downing Street had ordered extra material,
concerning the claim that Saddam Hussein could deploy such weapons
within 45 minutes, to be inserted into the dossier at the last
minute and against the wishes of the British intelligence services.
Gilligan later acknowledged that he had made mistakes in that
broadcast. But it is no defence, as both the BBC and Gilligan
have tried to argue, that it didn’t really matter, since
the sharpest allegations were dropped from later broadcasts, and
since on the whole there was a good story that needed to be covered.
There WAS, and continues to be, a good story. And many other
British journalists had been chasing it as well. The British government
had indeed been exceptionally keen to harden the case for war
against Iraq, choosing to believe evidence that has since turned
out itself to be wrong.
Perhaps also, journalists, and not only Andrew Gilligan, were
over-eager to believe evidence of what they already believed to
be government duplicity.
With the BBC issue now out of the way, British media and political
attention will and should now rightly focus on the case for war
against Iraq, how it was constructed and how it was made —
something that’s already happening in America.
But — and this is something the American press take much
more seriously than the British, with their fact-checkers and
rigorous attention to accuracy and detail — there is no
defence against sloppy and inaccurate journalism. No defence at
all.
If journalists are to hold the government and authorities to
the highest standards of moral probity — as they should
and as they will continue to do — then they have a profound
obligation to observe those standards themselves.
In the case of the Gilligan allegations, this was manifestly
not done — as was abundantly clear well before Hutton gave
his ruling.
And the BBC failed to investigate early enough, and most importantly
before replying so defensively to the Government’s complaints,
whether Gilligan’s report was accurate, and whether his
account of his conversation with Kelly could be trusted so far
as to bet the BBC’s entire reputation on it.
There are profound lessons in this affair not just for the BBC
and its editorial processes, but also for the wider British and
indeed other media in other parts of the world.
As Mike Jempson of the British media monitoring organisation
Presswise
argues:
“The temptation to confuse conjecture with fact, over-egg
the pudding, and run with rumour rather than risk losing an edge
over the competition by double-checking all the facts, is common
throughout the (British journalistic) trade — especially
where commercial advantage rather than the public interest rules
the day.”
Clearly, it’s important to hear what those are saying who
so profoundly disagree with Lord Hutton’s conclusions. Some
of Britain’s most influential commentators see his criticism
on the BBC, and his failure to criticise the government over its
exaggerations of Iraq’s threat, as the darkest possible
day for the world’s most respected media organisation.
The whole sorry story, including especially the tragedy of the
death of Dr Kelly, is a reminder also of the importance of educating
journalists about emotions, and how they play in to good or bad
journalism, especially where trauma is a part of the equation.
But BBC journalism will suffer in the longer term only if those
reporting for the Corporation, and those who comment on their
work from outside, draw the wrong conclusions from Hutton. Any
journalist or editor who wishes to learn from this is well advised
to read the Hutton report closely and in detail.
For further information, and British press comment on the BBC
and the Hutton report, see:
the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk
telegraph.co.uk
news.bbc.co.uk
guardian.co.uk
politics.guardian.co.uk
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