Light, at last, on the BBC's shabby piece of spin-doctoring (Gilligan's lies damaged journalism)

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | September 23, 2003 | Gerard Henderson

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Andrew Gilligan's reporting did incalculable harm to Tony Blair and to journalism, writes Gerard Henderson.

Tony Blair: more spinned against than spinner - with respect to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, at least? On the evidence taken so far, this is a possible finding from Lord Hutton's investigation into the circumstances surrounding the tragic death (apparently by suicide) of the British scientist Dr David Kelly.

The Hutton inquiry is regarded as providing a unique insight into the operations of democratic governments - political leaders and their advisers, bureaucrats, the military, even security services. Much of the material which has come before it would not normally become public for 30 years. Some information concerning security would never be released in the normal course of events. Little wonder, then, that Lord Hutton's deliberations have attracted such interest.

It so happens that the Hutton inquiry has also shed unique light on how the media operate in Western democracies, in this instance the BBC. Normally such information would never be divulged. For, unlike government, media outlets do not release their documents for public examination after three decades. But the Hutton inquiry has enabled media consumers to look behind closed doors as to how the product is put together. It has not been an edifying sight.

Flashback to May 29, 2003. It's 6.07am. Journalist Andrew Gilligan tells listeners on BBC Radio 4's Today program that the Blair Government deliberately "sexed up" an intelligence dossier to make a case for Britain's involvement in the coalition of the willing to rid Iraq of its WMDs and to topple Saddam Hussein. He says "the Government probably knew" that the material "was wrong". Gilligan says his anonymous source is a "senior officer" in charge "of drawing up that dossier".

Flashback to June 1, 2003. The Mail on Sunday runs a piece by Gilligan under the heading "I asked my intelligence source why Blair misled us all over Saddam's WMD. His response? One word - Campbell". The reference is to Alastair Campbell, then the Blair Government's director of communications. It turns out that the content of the article, but not the heading, was cleared by the BBC.

Little wonder that Gilligan's initial verbal report, followed by his article, created considerable outrage. For the BBC's leading current affairs radio program was alleging - on the basis of one anonymous source - that Blair and his colleagues had taken the nation to war on the basis of a lie, supported by an essentially fabricated document. Soon after, it was revealed that Kelly was Gilligan's source. There followed the personal tragedy which was the occasion for Hutton's investigation.

Gilligan gave evidence to the Hutton inquiry on August 12 and on September 18. On the latter occasion, where he was cross-examined, Gilligan put in a shocker. The full flavour of the exchange is best judged from reading the transcript on the Hutton inquiry website, http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk.

In summary, Gilligan openly acknowledged, or reluctantly conceded, that he had made a "slip of the tongue" in his initial broadcast - he had not intended to accuse the Blair Government of dishonesty. Gilligan also said he had falsely described Kelly as a member of the intelligence service - it was another "slip of the tongue". He failed, however, to provide any plausible excuse for not correcting such significant errors.

There was more, much more. Gilligan conceded that he was "quite wrong" to have dobbed in his source (Kelly) to some MPs on the British Foreign Affairs Committee. He was "under an enormous amount of pressure at the time", you see. And, yes, it was a "mistake", on "two occasions", to "ascribe" statements to Kelly when in fact both were "actually a conclusion" reached by Gilligan himself. Just a mistake. There were also numerous occasions when Gilligan went into the "cannot remember" mode. Moreover, he lost a crucial written record of his meeting with Kelly; it simply disappeared from his "laptop bag".

The BBC management has not emerged well from the inquiry. During the height of the controversy, it made false statements. Moreover, the BBC director-general, Greg Dyke, indicated that he did not even become aware of Gilligan's May 29 broadcast until weeks later - even though this was a matter of considerable public controversy. Dyke also acknowledged that he had rejected the Government's criticisms of Gilligan's report without investigating the matter himself.

As the British media commentator David Aaronovitch said on ABC Radio National's Media Report last Thursday, the BBC is part of the "liberal establishment". In Australian parlance, this means leftist. As such it is heavily involved in what the US scholar Thomas E. Patterson has referred to as "critical journalism" or "attack journalism" (see his paper "Doing Well and Doing Good", J.F. Kennedy School of Government, 2000).

Patterson says critical/attack journalism is based on the proposition that "most politicians are presumed to be incompetent, venal or deceptive, and it is the journalists' role to let everyone know that's the way it is". He makes a compelling case that this kind of reporting has weakened "attachments to politics". It's just that the decline in "political interest has diminished interest in news" since citizens have become "as tired of negative political news as they are of negative political advertising".

Gilligan is an attack journalist par excellence. On this occasion, however, he was caught in his own (friendly) fire. Yet he has damaged the Blair Government in the process. Many Brits (wrongly) believe they were deliberately lied to over Iraq's WMDs. And few Brits know that Kelly believed Iraq possessed WMDs and supported regime change in Baghdad. It's spin, BBC style. But it does not do democracy or journalism any good.

Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

[alloysteel]

The BBC has drawn up into a circular firing squad. Unfortunately, not before they inflicted considerable collateral damage to those over whom they ran roughshod.