Britain's broadcast crisis
By Richard Tait Posted Apr 1 2004
A demonstrator walks away from the headquarters of the BBC in London during a two-hour walk-out by BBC employees in the wake of the Hutton report, which criticized the media corporation's management but not the government.
At 6.07 on the morning of May 29 last year, a BBC journalist sat in his home waiting to do a live broadcast on the BBC's most important radio program Today. His name was Andrew Gilligan, and he was the program's defense correspondent. He had a real scoop to tell his listeners: a well-placed source had revealed apparent political interference in the British government intelligence dossier, which had been one of the justifications for the Allied attack on Iraq earlier in the year.
But far from earning awards and congratulations, this story ended in disaster. What happened in the two-minute broadcast has plunged the BBC, one of the world's most respected news organizations, into its worst-ever crisis and raised fundamental issues about the nature of British journalism and its relationship with the state.
Gilligan's report, in the form of an unscripted conversation with the program's anchor, made two central allegations. He said that the British government had “sexed up” the dossier to make Saddam Hussein's threat to the West seem worse than it actually was and that a key claim, that the Iraqis had chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD) deployable within 45 minutes, had been inserted even though the government knew it to be untrue.
The government denounced the story as a lie. The BBC stood by its report. There was a frantic hunt inside the government for the source. Eventually a respected government scientist, David Kelly, came forward and said he had spoken to Gilligan though he had not said what Gilligan had reported. The government announced they had found the source and confirmed his name to inquiring journalists. Kelly was told by the government to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into the affair, where he was roughly treated by skeptical Members of Parliament.
A few days later he went for a walk near his home and killed himself. The BBC then confirmed that he had been Andrew Gilligan's source. The government was forced to announce a judicial inquiry into his death and appointed a senior judge, Lord Hutton, to investigate.
There was little doubt that the BBC did not come out of the inquiry well. Andrew Gilligan's story was unscripted. His key allegation, that the government “probably knew” that the claim of weapons of mass destruction deployable within 45 minutes was untrue, was not supported by his notes of his meeting with Kelly, because Kelly had not said it. It was the reporter's inference from the conversation.
The BBC had not put the allegations to the government before running the story. Andrew Gilligan himself never repeated the allegation of deliberate deception. In subsequent broadcasts that day he toned down his story. But no one in the BBC editorial chain looked at his notes before rejecting the government's complaints.
The dispute had come at a bad time for BBC and government relations. The Blair government has pursued an aggressive public relations strategy. Its opponents accuse it of excessive spinning and media management. The government's then communications chief, Alastair Campbell, blamed Britain's partisan press for not reporting the government fairly. He argued there were too many unsourced or single-sourced stories simply attacking the government, and he became angry with what he thought was the BBC following suit. He was particularly critical of the Today program, which traditionally sets the political agenda in the UK, for what he saw, fairly or unfairly, as a new policy of trying to make news rather than report it, abandoning the BBC's traditional editorial approach of strict impartiality and accuracy.
The BBC has a unique place in British journalism. Broadcast news is by far the most trusted source of information in British society. A recent survey asking people who they trusted for coverage of the Iraq War found 72% chose a television or radio station, and most of them chose the BBC. Its independence from state control is protected by its board of governors, a group of non executives, usually drawn from outside broadcasting. Unusually, they are also the BBC's regulator, responsible for ensuring the accuracy and impartiality of its journalism.
In this case, they acted as champions rather than regulators. The BBC was being subjected to a barrage of complaints from Campbell from before the Iraq War. Exceptionally, the prime minister had written personally to the BBC director general, Greg Dyke, in similar terms. The management rejected the complaints and looked to the governors for support. The governors thought the BBC was being bullied and defended the BBC's independence.
But as the chairman, Gavyn Davies, a respected economist, conceded, the scale of the complaints “scrambled our radar screens at the top of the BBC.” Neither the management nor the governors spotted that, while most of the complaints were unfair, on this one story Campbell was right.
When Hutton reported his findings on Jan. 28, most in the media believed that he would criticize both the BBC for flaws in its reporting and editing procedures and the government for naming Kelly and contributing to the pressures that drove him to suicide. There had also been clear evidence of the prime minister's staff suggesting changes to the wording of the dossier to the intelligence staff drawing it up.
However, his report was surprisingly one-sided. He accepted the assurances of ministers and civil servants that they had done nothing wrong, but he castigated the BBC for its errors. Gavyn Davies resigned at once. Greg Dyke, a popular and charismatic figure, made an apology, which the government said did not go far enough. He was forced to announce his resignation the next day. The acting chairman of the BBC then issued an unreserved apology, and Andrew Gilligan later announced his resignation. The BBC is now looking for a chairman and a director-general.
The BBC covered the immediate aftermath of these catastrophic events with commendable fairness and rigor. But journalists are already worrying about understandable signs of a new caution in BBC journalism. When the Today program challenged the British defense secretary on WMD, the government demanded a long clarification be read out, and the BBC's management, unusually, agreed. The BBC's charter, setting out its public service remit, is up for review this year. The role of the governors is likely to change or even disappear, with one source close to Downing Street describing the current governors as “the living dead.”
And yet, despite the bloodletting and the judge's strictures, the polls show that the public still trusts the BBC more than the government and that many people regard the Hutton report as a whitewash. Whatever the flaws in parts of the BBC's journalism, it is now clear there were no WMD in Iraq, whether deployable within 45-minutes notice or not; and that government experts like Kelly, who worried that the government was overstating the Iraqi threat, have been proven right.
The government's victory is a pyrrhic one, but there are no winners among the media either. British journalism will be living with the fallout from this affair for many years to come.