Intelligence

System was at fault from top to bottom

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

By Dominic Kennedy

THE BBC has a defective editorial system, management was faulty and unreasonable, and the governors incorrectly believed that their independence required them to reject the Government’s complaints.
Lord Hutton’s report condemns the BBC from top to bottom. There are Andrew Gilligan’s inadequate, lost and conflicting notes. Then there are the managers who failed to check his story before rushing to defend him from Alastair Campbell’s attacks and who failed to notice the holes in his notekeeping when they did look at them.

Suspicions about Mr Gilligan’s allegedly flawed reporting were hidden from senior managers and, in turn, by managers from the governors.

Finally, the board failed to check the story, which might have led them to withdraw their insistence that it had been in the public interest and admit it was wrong.

Nobody in the BBC chain of command escapes Lord Hutton’s censure. First, he acknowledges the high points of principle involved, striking a balance between the public’s right to know and the media’s resposibility to get its facts right when attacking individuals.

The communication by the media of information obtained by investigative reporters on matters of public interest is a vital part of a democratic society, Lord Hutton said. The right to communicate is, however, subject to the qualification that the media should not make false allegations impugning the integrity of others, including politicians.

The BBC’s editorial system was defective by allowing Mr Gilligan to broadcast his report at 6.07am without editors seeing and approving a script.

BBC management was “at fault” for failing to investigate properly the Government’s complaints. Before Richard Sambrook, the director of news, wrote to Alastair Campbell in defence of Mr Gilligan, management failed to examine the reporter’s notes to see if they supported his allegations. When management did look at the notes, it failed to appreciate that they did not support the most serious allegations and so failed to draw this to the attention of the governors.

Owing to what Lord Hutton condemned as defective management, the contents of an e-mail from Kevin Marsh, the Today programme Editor, criticising Mr Gilligan’s reporting, sent to Stephen Mitchell, head of radio news, were not made known to Mr Sambrook or the governors.

The governors were placed in a difficult position when they met on July 6, because the management was telling them that it was satisfied about the reliability and credibility of Mr Gilligan’s anonymous source. The governors were right that it was their duty to protect the BBC’s independence against attacks by the Government, Lord Hutton accepted.

He blamed Mr Campbell for raising the temperature of the dispute in evidence to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, in which the Government’s director of communications and strategy, as he was then, accused the BBC of having an anti-war agenda. There was, however, more to what Mr Campbell said to the MPs: the Government’s concern about Mr Gilligan’s broadcasts was a separate issue about which specific complaints had been made.

The governors should have recognised more fully that their duty to protect the BBC’s independence was not incompatible with considering these complaints properly, which they failed to do.

Gavyn Davies, the Chairman, had explained in evidence to the inquiry the “understandable” view that the governors had to rely on management to investigate Mr Gilligan’s source. But that was not the correct view to take because the Government, with the authority of the Prime Minister and John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, had denied the truth of the report. Rather than relying on management’s assurances, the governors should have made more detailed investigations into Mr Gilligan’s notes.

THE BBC REACTS

The statement made by Greg Dyke, the BBC Director-General:

“We note Lord Hutton’s criticisms of the BBC. Many of these relate to mistakes which the BBC has already acknowledged and for which we have already expressed regret.

The BBC does accept that certain key allegations reported by Andrew Gilligan on the Today programme on May 29 last year were wrong and we apologise for them.

However, we would point out again that at no stage in the last eight months have we accused the Prime Minister of lying. The dossier raised issues of great public interest. Dr Kelly was a credible source. Provided his allegations were reported accurately, the public in a modern democracy had a right to be made aware of them. We have already taken steps to improve our procedures.”

January 28, 2004 at 08:24 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home