Posted on 09/26/2003 3:52:49 PM PDT by blam
The BBC: bruised, but not broken
September 26 2003 at 04:15PM
London - The David Kelly affair has shaken the BBC but in the long run the credibility of the world's biggest and best-known public broadcaster looks largely intact, media experts say.
Evidence before the inquiry into Kelly's suicide broadly confirmed the May 29 report on BBC radio's Today programme that so angered the government - that intelligence experts had expressed unease over its September 2002 dossier on Iraq and the country's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
It was after a meeting with Kelly, a ministry of defence expert on Iraq's firepower, in a London hotel that defence reporter Andrew Gilligan aired his report on the influential morning public affairs show.
"What we've been told by one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up that dossier was that, actually, the government probably knew that the 45 minute figure was wrong, even before it decided to put it in," Gilligan said.
He added: "Downing Street, our sources says, ordered a week before publication, ordered it to be sexed up, to be made more exciting and ordered more facts to be discovered."
Downing Street vigorously denied the report, and the BBC's refusal to bow to its demands for a retraction led to an unprecedented row between them, and to the defence ministry's decision to expose Kelly as the BBC's source.
Giving evidence before the inquiry headed by Brian Hutton, both Gilligan and BBC senior management acknowledged that a number of mistakes had been made "in good faith" and that lessons had to be learned.
Whereas Kelly was portrayed as a senior intelligence official, Gilligan's lawyer Heather Rogers acknowledged that he was more properly "a member of the intelligence community, an intelligence insider, a source on intelligence".
Of greater concern was the haste with which BBC governors, the guarantors of its public service mandate, dashed to back up Gilligan's report without ascertaining the identity of his source, observers say.
Despite these errors, the BBC's prestige among listeners and viewers remains largely intact, said Rod Allen, head of the journalism department at London's City University.
"In my opinion, Lord Hutton will conclude that even though they made some errors of detail, they were right to report the concerns" relative to the Iraqi weapons dossier, he told AFP.
"I don't think public opinion has been substantially diverted against the BBC," added Tim Crook, who lectures on media law and ethics at the University of London.
"The BBC has shown humility and has very rightfully admitted what they got wrong with hindsight," he told AFP.
"But I think the inquiry will be very damaging for the government, and potentially fatal for some politicians."
The affair has, however, given ammunition to politicians, to conservatives who accuse the BBC of chronic left-wing bias, and of commercial rivals who regard the broadcaster as state-subsidised competition.
It has also strengthened the case for institutional change at the "Beeb" that could have an impact on its power of self-regulation and the way it is financed - currently, by way of a tax on practically every TV set in Britain.
Behind the scenes, some concede that the Kelly affair has revived criticism about the increasing pressure that programmes such as Today put on BBC journalists to generate scoops, or exclusive stories.
The charter on which the BBC is built comes up for renewal in 2006, and experts say the review that the government has already started will be the most crucial since the BBC was founded in 1922.
But as Crook said: "My subjective view, and I think it's being borne out by opinion polls, is that the public still trust the BBC more than they trust the government." - Sapa-AFP
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