| Hutton - my view |
January
29th 2004
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The
Hutton Report is out - yesterday the Law Lord delivered his judgment on
the death of Dr David Kelly - exonerating Downing Street and rounding on
the BBC. No one except Dr Kelly was blamed for his death - he committed
suicide. The shock in this report for me is the way that nothing was laid
at the door of the government while the BBC was delivered stinging criticism.
As a BBC employee I feel a deep sense of unfairness. As a journalist I feel a deep sense of foreboding. The BBC upholds some of the highest standards of journalism. You would think from the Hutton report that the BBC had done nothing to investigate the truth of Andrew Gilligan's report about the government's part in producing a dossier about the alleged threat from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But the investigation did happen and hours were spent behind closed doors agonising over the BBC's response. What the BBC did, which Hutton didn't do, was to look at the wider picture. By the time the offending report was broadcast in May 2003 it had become clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that the dossier contained false information. So it was right to investigate how it came about. Gilligan's report was in the public interest. It conveyed something of what was going on inside the intelligence service and it also took an informed guess as to how the false information came to be in the dossier. Lord Hutton confined himself only to the part the government played in compiling the dossier and how David Kelly was identified as the source of Andrew Gilligan's story. So the BBC, in doing its public duty after the event of war, is condemned, while the government, which clearly got it wrong on the subject of WMD, is cleared of all guilt. Alastair Campbell made a huge fuss over just one report because the government was about to be exposed for misleading the country over the reasons for going to war against Iraq. As a result Dr David Kelly was exposed as the source and ultimately committed suicide. The Hutton Inquiry was instigated and focused on just one broadcast - a two way at 6.07am. The wider issue and governments part in it was ignored. So where is the justice? Where is the recognition of how difficult it is for journalists to do their public duty? Where is the honour and who will restore it? Broadcast journalists are overwhelming non political - unlike newspaper editors who can, and usually do, choose a political stance. Further to that there's no commercial pressure on the BBC. The only pressures on the BBC are from it's licence fee payers - the public -and the government because they ultimately determine the future of the corporation through the charter renewal process. Hutton was about one report and subsequent investigation. You would think there had been a root and branch review of all aspects of its operation from the utter condemnation that has been levelled against the BBC. Both the government and particularly Downing Street, and the BBC had their inner workings exposed as the Hutton Inquiry cross examined witnesses from both sides. Everyone who listened to the evidence saw flaws on both sides. Lord Hutton chose only to report the flaws of the BBC. Because of this Lord Hutton's report is a whitewash. The question remains. Why?
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Blog: BBC Crisis - My view
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