Ordinary Gweilo

[I know this has got absolutely nothing to do with the purported subject matter of this blog, but I think I can permit myself this indulgence.]

Last night I watched Lord Hutton presenting the conclusions of his inquiry, shown on BBC World (and CNN). I was expecting a fairly brief summary, but he actually read large chunks of his text, and it lasted very nearly 90 minutes. It can’t have been much fun for the BBC, given that it was severely criticised by Lord Hutton, and I can’t have been the only viewer willing him to get on to the conclusions rather than summarizing the facts and the evidence.

On balance I think his conclusions were correct. The BBC deserved the criticism it got, and needs to re-think the way it deals with controversial stories, and should not blindly defend its journalists without knowing the full background. Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter involved, behaved very badly throughout, and it’s hard to see how he can carry on working for the BBC.

What surprised me was that government got off so lightly. Geoff Hoon in particularly adopted a very high-handed attitude, seemingly arguing that most of the decisions were made by civil servants without his knowledge, and Alastair Campbell took the whole thing very personally (at least in part because of previous run-ins with Gilligan). I guess that Lord Hutton paid much closer attention to the evidence than I did, and drew some different conclusions. I don’t believe that anyone in the government can be held responsible for David Kelly’s death, but if they had done things differently he might still be alive today.

The ‘Today’ programme employs reporters such as Andrew Gilligan precisely because it wants to set the news agenda and break important stories. That means taking risks and sometimes being controversial. However, ‘Today’ is the flagship news programme on the BBC’s most serious channel, and listeners tend to believe its reporters are telling the truth. So, when Andrew Gilligan reported a serious allegation against the government (suposedly made by Dr David Kelly), it carried much more weight than if the same thing had been written in a newspaper or broadcast elsewhere. The BBC therefore had a responsibility to check that it was properly substantiated and reported accurately, and should have been willing to issue an apology and correction if it was misleading.

Thereafter the BBC seemed to be interested only in fighting its corner and defending its reputation, but in fact its stubborn refusal to admit any mistakes has actually damaged its reputation.

Gavyn Davies has resigned as chairman of the BBC, but seems to have felt that Hutton was unfair to the BBC. He was quoted as saying that you can’t choose the referee and have to accept his decisions, but like many a football manager he also questioned the referee’s judgement. It might have been better to have had the grace to apologize and take the responsibility for the mistakes that had been made by the organization.

The Kelly family were unhappy because Lord Hutton had not agreed with all of their arguments, by which I assume they mean that they expected Geoff Hoon and possibly Tony Blair to be censured. Their feelings about the death of David Kelly are understandable, but I thought that their QC really went too far during the inquiry in trying to establish that the government was responsible for his suicide. The government could certainly have handled it better, but Dr Kelly was not authorized to talk to reporters in the way he did, and he had then misled MPs about these conversations, so he was certainly not blameless.

Michael Howard made himself look rather foolish by criticizing Tony Blair before the report was published, and it was totally understandable that Blair was elated when the conclusions were made public. However, he must know that the whole affair has damaged his reputation and made people even more cynical about politicians.