Posted on 07/20/2003 2:11:43 PM PDT by demlosers
The BBC will this week embark on the largest damage limitation exercise, arguably, of its 76-year history.
A team of top executives and in-house lawyers will begin assembling documents, transcripts and tapes relating to the intelligence dossiers on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the corporation's reliance on David Kelly, the government scientist found dead last week, as its main source for those stories.
Ostensibly, the team is preparing evidence for the judicial inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Mr Kelly's death. In reality, their work could determine the future regulation, editorial controls and structure of the publicly-funded broadcaster.
"Everybody is completely reeling from this," according to one insider. "We are putting together a team to look at each stage of what happened."
The stakes could not be higher.
At the BBC's central London headquarters, executives led by Greg Dyke, director general, are determined to prevent the affair from escalating into a campaign to reform the BBC.
Britain's publicly-funded broadcaster - which receives £2.66bn a year in licence fee income - fears that a broader shake-up could jeopardise its worldwide reputation and international expansion plans.
The inquiry coincides with intense media scrutiny both at home and abroad. Sky News, the satellite channel controlled by BSkyB - in which Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation holds a controlling stake - last week announced the resignation of a senior correspondent found to have faked a story during the Iraq war.
In the US, some TV networks have been criticised for flag-waving and unquestioning coverage of the conflict.
In Britain on Sunday, Gerald Kaufman, chairman of the House of Commons culture committee, on Sunday called for Ofcom, the new media regulator, to take over regulation of BBC editorial content from the corporation's board of governors.
"The corporation has a great deal to answer for. They started all this," he said. "The first thing they should do is apologise and conduct a rigorous internal inquiry."
Ofcom is already due to begin a review of public service broadcasting next year; it will ask searching questions of the BBC. But the government has no plans to extend Ofcom's remit, to cover BBC accuracy and impartiality.
The challenge for Mr Dyke is to make sure the government does not change its mind. Failure to do so would overshadow BBC preparations for defending its public service charter, due to expire at the end of 2006.
Up to now, the BBC has won acclaim for defending its independence. But Mr Kelly's death dramatically altered the importance of the slanging match with Downing Street.
The row began on May 29, when Andrew Gilligan, defence correspondent for the Today radio programme, quoted "a British official who was involved in the preparation of the [intelligence] dossier" who claimed it was "transformed in the week before it was published, to make it sexier".
Alastair Campbell, Downing Street's communications director, was furious. He accused the BBC of branding Tony Blair a liar and suggesting the prime minister led the country to war on a false premise.
In briefings, media interviews and parliamentary committees meetings, government ministers queued up to attack the BBC. The corporation, in turn, claimed Downing Street was deflecting attention its justification for going to war.
Mr Kelly, whom the ministry of defence named as the likely source for the BBC stories, was caught between the two.
Until on Sunday, the corporation refused to confirm whether the UN weapons inspector was the source for the Gilligan report.
The BBC decision, however, served only to increase the pressure on Mr Kelly. Sunday's admission that he was the principal source for both Mr Gilligan and another BBC report leaves the corporation exposed on several other fronts.
Mr Kelly told members of Parliament that from his contacts with Mr Gilligan "I do not see how he could make the authoritative statement that he was making from the comments that I made".
Mr Gilligan is now on "gardening leave". One official said: "He will not be broadcasting for the moment".
After an emergency meeting of the governors on July 6, Mr Davies said corporation guidelines allowed reporters, in exceptional circumstances, to use single anonymous sources if they were "senior intelligence sources".
Richard Sambrook, director of news, meanwhile, had told the Today programme: "We've always said that we had one senior and credible source in the intelligence services".
Mr Kelly was not a member of the intelligence services.
The head of news - who did not know Mr Kelly's identity at the time - now admits he was wrong to make that statement.
The governors have ordered a review of impartiality rules. And the teams working on Charter renewal are expected to include a detailed case for the independence of BBC news.
All that could be undermined by a damning verdict from the judicial inquiry. But the new BBC team, which will be led by a non-news executive, intends to prevent that outcome.
"We would be surprised if this was allowed to contaminate the broader future of the BBC," according to one BBC director. "But we are leaving nothing to chance."
That is their reputation. How exactly does this story change it at all?
I remember reading an article yesterday that said Kelly was in contact(email) with someone the morning he died......he complained of "dark actors" in this mess to his wife.
His wife said he was angry before he went for his walk .........what if he was in contact with Gilligan ........and Gilligan told him he was on his own.
They ruined this man........the ba$tards.
LOL
BBC Official Secrets Act Damage 'control'.........LOL
:-)
"Wag-the-Bulldog"
:-)
Maybe Bush and Blair have more on them than has been revealed.
Ping.
The new official secrets act have whittled down the sentences. ie two years, then six months, then three months. This according to the degree of the offence. If this man Kelly,did not have to sign under this act, then it must be a colossal error. It has teeth, a stupid woman leaked to the press, that American devices of war were to arrive on British soil. She got three months and dismissal.
London lad here, says about Kelly this: For all the difference it would have made, he should have kept his stupid mouth shut.
Blairs and news medias don't seem to mix.
Interesting that Judith Miller (the WMD correspondent from the NYT) made sure that the e-mail got out in public quickly. I think she knows something.
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