I’m getting rather annoyed with a lot of the nonsense that is being written in various blogs in reponse to the report of the Hutton Inquiry. People who know next to nothing about the background to the story sound off about Tony Blair or the BBC, based mainly on their own prejudices and second-hand information about what happened (links via Simon).
As you would expect, Lord Hutton’s report has been analyzed extensively by the British press, who are surprised to find that their own exhaustive accounts and interpretation of the inquiry at the time somewhat at odds with his lordship’s conclusions. It’s hardly surprising when you consider that newspapers wanted new headlines each day and the journalists were desperately trying to make sense of a story that was still developing. Unsurprisingly, Lord Hutton was reluctant to draw conclusions too quickly, but he also seems to have generally given people the benefit of the doubt and not drawn any negatives inferences if witnesses “clarified” their evidence when re-called.
Comparing the coverage in the British press during the inquiry with the summary and conclusions in Lord Hutton’s report should be a sobering experience for many journalists and newspaper editors. They jumped to conclusions that seemed questionable at the time and which look totally absurd when all of the evidence is considered. Judges are naturally cautious, and the legal system often produces results that appear to defy common sense – but if you were accused of a serious wrong-doing wouldn’t you want to be treated fairly, and for all the facts to be considered, and for the judge to weigh up the evidence before finding you guilty?
This was not a criminal trial, it was an inquiry into the events surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, and Lord Hutton refused to consider the wider issues. As such, the conclusions that can be drawn from the report are somewhat limited. For example, if you thought beforehand that Tony Blair misled the British public about Iraq then it’s unlikely that you will have changed your mind. The same really applies to the BBC – the criticism from Lord Hutton is not about its journalism in general, or whether it was fair to the government, but about the way that one story was reported by one journalist on one day, and how management responded to complaints from the government.
To understand what happened at the BBC, we need to go back about 20 years to when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. She felt that the BBC was biased against her, and Norman Tebbit (then chairman of the Conservative Party) pulled no punches in his attacks on the corporation. Ever since, governments have seemingly believed that the BBC was being unfair to them.
So, when Alastair Campbell (the government’s communications director) complained about Andrew Gilligan’s reports, the BBC management didn’t hesitate – they stood firmly behind the story and assumed that the storm would eventually blow over. Unfortunately, they failed to check whether the story could be substantiated, and they even exaggerated the status of Gilligan’s source (Dr Kelly), claiming that he was a senior member of the intelligence service.
The biggest problem for the BBC was Andrew Gilligan. The BBC management obviously didn’t know enough about him, otherwise they would have asked more questions and dug a bit deeper. His behaviour was disgraceful in many different ways, and it was most unfortunate that the BBC staked its own reputation on his professionalism.
However, this remains an isolated incident. The BBC deserves criticism for its mistakes, and because Gavyn Davies and Greg Dyke were personally involved they had little choice but to offer their resignations (though in the latter case it may not have necessary for the governers to accept the offer). The BBC will recover, and it will carry on upsetting the government of the day, but one hopes that it will take a little more care next time.
Simon used this as an argument against government-funded broadcasters. Of course, the British Government doesn’t actually fund the BBC – it gets its money from the Licence Fee, which you have to pay if you own a TV, but maybe it amounts to the same thing. This is a subject that causes surprisingly little controversy in the UK, though there are certainly people campaigning against the licence fee. A bigger issue is the way that the BBC competes “unfairly” against commercial broadcasters, and Simon will find Rupert Murdoch in full agreement with him on this one. The BBC is criticized if its programmes are unpopular, and also criticized if its programmes are too popular! The irony here is that if the licence fee was abolished and the BBC did start selling advertising, this could be very bad news for its commercial rivals, at least in the short term.
Simon may be surprised to hear that I am not going to defend the status quo, and I don’t have any big objection to new ideas for the funding or structure of the BBC being considered, but my opinion is that nothing significant will happen. No government would want to be seen as the destroyer of the BBC, and you can be sure that the BBC would fight any fundamental changes and most likely win the battle.
My guess is that in a few years time, if anyone remembers the Hutton Inquiry it will probably be because of Tony Blair rather than the BBC.
Ordinary Gweilo 
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