In defence of the BBC

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1002358,00.html

The BBC made its admission because it felt it had no other option. I think it was the wrong decision, but it is not difficult to understand. Pummelled and buffeted by New Labour pundits, compliant backbenchers and select committee chairmen, the director-general will have felt it a concession which could now be granted without further damage being done to poor David Kelly. But that may not be correct.

For a start, it leaves Andrew Gilligan in public disagreement with a man who is now dead and cannot, therefore, defend himself. And paradoxically, for that very reason, it is an argument which Gilligan and the BBC will find difficult to win. But in every other respect, the corporation has got it right throughout this appalling imbroglio. It stood by its journalism and its journalists - not out of arrogance, as some have alleged, but because it knew that what they had reported was accurate and important.

Andrew Gilligan - and other Today programme reporters - used to claw the walls in frustration as their reports were pulled apart, line by line, by me as editor, usually in conjunction with a deputy editor henchman, whenever the story they were delivering carried even the slightest whiff of controversy. And then I would disappear down some dank, grey corridor at Television Centre to have my bosses pull the story apart, line by line and word by word, with me stamping and pouting around like a sullen adolescent. Believe me, the BBC takes its public service requirement very seriously indeed. It knows it inhabits a different universe to its broadcasting and newspaper competitors.

And the same painstaking process will have been undertaken over Gilligan's report. And then, later, with the almost identical report on Newsnight by Susan Watts. In a later Mail on Sunday article Gilligan used the word "Campbell", while his Today report merely mentioned Downing Street. How odd, then, that it is the Campbell word alone which triggered such furious indignation from the government. Are we expected to believe that the security services and the intelligence experts were delighted by Alastair Campbell's apparent misuse of their evidence? Are we expected to believe that the word "Campbell" was never uttered?

[Cha]

1. It seemed to me like the "wrong decision". too.

They didn't have to name their scource, so why did they?

"This has been a war almost entirely about Campbell's hubris. It has now claimed a life: and that is unacceptable."

I hope this gets sorted out on the right side of Justice.

I must say I'm really sad for Dr Kelly and his family and friends!

[realityboy]

2. excellent article

By a guy who was a former editor of the radio program in question no less. I agree that the BBC has followed the proper journalistic line throughout this affair. Its a disgrace and now a very real tragedy that Campbell and Blair are playing political games with the intergrity and freedom of the public service broadcaster to deflect from their lies.