Hutton Inquiry: BBC To Get Trashed?

[Shi Huangdi]

Good to see Blair vindicated.

[Drake Tungsten]

Good to see Blair vindicated.

Yes, it is.

Blair -

BBC -

[Agathon]

Enjoy it while you can. He's finished. Apparently the British public still support the BBC by five to one.

[CerberusIV]

Teflon Tony escapes again.

The really interesting thing for me was watching the silence from the opposition benches in the House of Commons after Tony Blair challenged Michael Howard. I have thought for some time that one of the reasons Howard was put in as Tory leader instead of IDS was to do as much political points scoring off the Hutton report as possible. I wonder if any Tory MP's now regret changing leader because this didn't come off?

[Jamski]

This will end Blair for sure. People LOVE the BBC more than the government. People TRUST the BBC, and people know when something stinks of a cover-up.

Apparrently the government are shouting for Greg **** to reisign as well now.

-Jam

[Jamski]

Why is D-Y-K-E censored? Its his fricking name!

-Jam

[MikeH]

Originally posted by Park Avenue


What you have described is giving a balanced viewpoint, offering both perspectives.

I was asking for an explanation as to why the press' job is to "bash the government". See your post of 21:51:02.

Exactly my point. I would normally call it giving a balanced viewpoint, you had just called it bashing so I was just using the language you used because I thought you'd understand it better.

[Drogue]

Jamski: But not all the BBC agrees. Some BBC news programs disagree with how they handled it. I trust the BBC more than the government. But I think the BBC ****ed up. Gilligan's report was way off. It was selective, it was biased, it was to bash the government. He was looking for a story to make his name. Sadly, he got it

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Drogue
Jamski: But not all the BBC agrees. Some BBC news programs disagree with how they handled it. I trust the BBC more than the government. But I think the BBC ****ed up. Gilligan's report was way off. It was selective, it was biased, it was to bash the government. He was looking for a story to make his name. Sadly, he got it

I think Gilligan was basically right if not literally on that one claim. A lot of facts that didn't quite add up were mashed together and presented as a case for war. The current trend is to blame the intelligence services and leave the government squeaky clean.

Frankly, I don't believe a word of it. It doesn't add up.

[Agathon]

Told you so. A majority think it was a whitewash. Blair is toast.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/huttoninquiry/story/0,13812,1134265,00.html

[Cruddy]

To be honest, I reckon the Hutton report is a very fair accounting of the evidence.

The conclusions are of course a complete whitewash.

The Govt was wrong to quote one source and use it as an excuse for war.

The BBC were wrong to quote one source and use it as a news item.

Where lives the greater wrong?

[East Street Trader]

Originally posted by Agathon
A question: has anyone here ever had the inside info in such an inquiry?

Well I am a government lawyer and it is the group of lawyers to which I belong who provide the legal secretariat which instructs counsel to public enquiries, helps gather, marshall and present the evidence under the direction of the person conducting the enquiry and provides legal support generally (conducting correspondence, practical arrangements with witnesses etc.).

When I first started, it was always just one of us who was appointed. But nowadays there tends to be a team of three or four. They can be hard work.

It would not be right for me to say anything about any specific enquiry but I will say that I do not share the wholesale cynicism being expressed by some in this thread and elsewhere.

And that is not because I like these things - I hate them - or because I support governments, I have cordially disliked ever single administration I have served.

It is true that there are some enquiries where a person is carefully picked expressly to whitewash or obfuscate. But that is the exception not the rule. Most of the people appointed honestly try to get to the bottom of things - and they often succceed.

It is also true, as is being said of Lord Hutton, that the people appointed tend to be establishment figures. It could hardly be otherwise. And that does mean that there is an inbuilt bias.

But that does not mean that evidence is suppressed or that conclusions adverse to the government are either rare or shirked.

On the contrary the "insider" expectation is usually a bad outcome for the gov.t. Often justified by events.

It is also true that reports are often long and turgid. I would go so far as to criticise some enquiries for casting their net too wide, taking far too long and being guilty of prolixity in the final report. But that is mostly just because it is very hard to stay 100% focused, especially when (as is almost invariably the case) the issues addressed are themselves a bit diffuse. And it is actually quite important for the report to recite a lot of the relevant evidence. It could be shorter if it just listed conclusions but that would not be right and no one would accept it.

There is quite a lot that goes on behind the scenes but that arises because of the need to be fair. So, for example, when someone is going to be criticised it is the practice to give them advance sight of what is intended to be said about them so as to ensure they have had their say properly. And there are always difficult procedural issues like which persons shall have the right to be represented by counsel or solicitors before the enquiry (and who pays for that). You simply can't let it degenerate into a scrum but there are invariable plenty of folk with a stake in the outcome.

Actully running many enquiries - strangely big planning enquiries can be so (Sizewell B, which concerned where to cite a nuclear power station is long enough ago that I can mention that one expressly) - is tricky. Lots of people want to give evidence and lots also want to be disruptive.

Many enquiries do not get splashed all over the national press because their subject is dull or because interest will be mostly local. Planning for motorways is one example of this, another is enquiries which centre on misdeeds in a particular institution, a hospital say (I represented clients twice when in private practice at ones like that).

But many are very newsworthy. When I first became a gov.t lawyer one colleague in the next office was doing the enquiry into the King's Cross Underground fire and one across the corridor was away doing one of the periodic enquiries we have had to have into children coming to great harm while under the wing of our social services workers. It may have been the silly one involving allegations of satanic abuse but those ones blur together a bit ihn my aging mind so that may be wrong.

I should perhaps add that I have not myself yet been the solicitor to an enquiry so what I say is still from the outside, but nevertheless from a seat so close as almost to be inside.

For those who like oddities, from the point of view of me and my colleagues the two most important things when appointed to support an enquiry are to negotiate well about what happens to the rest of your work while you are tied up and to negotiate even better about your expenses - these things can be held in out of the way places.

I don't like them, they are often flawed, but there is a great deal - a very great deal - more honest endeavour involved that cynics would ever be willing to acknowledge.

[CerberusIV]

Originally posted by Agathon
Told you so. A majority think it was a whitewash. Blair is toast.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/huttonin...134265,00.html

The media are worried that this report will be used to impose controls on the BBC, through its charter, which will be applied to the rest of the media by extension. They were also hoping for some ammunition to attack the Government and now need something else to fill the column inches and airtime. They see it in their interests to shift the focus back onto the Government and PM as quickly as possible.

The real issue that the BBC have to contend with is that they leapt to Gilligan's defence without properly checking that his story stood up. That is where they are vulnerable and why heads have rolled at the top.

Like many Brits I do think the BBC is pretty good but I am also realistic enough to say that it doesn't attain the standards it once did relative to the rest of the media here.

[MikeH]

I see Murdoch's press is taking it's opportunity to really go over the top on the BBC. No self interest for Murdoch in seeing the BBC brought down is there.

[lightblue]

I like the bit how the MoD isn't apportioned any blame for naming Kelly to "interested sources". Basically the press phoned the MoD, went through a list of names, the MoD said: Mr Smith, no he didn't do it, Ms Jones, no she didn't do, Dr Kelly, yes it was him...

It is just too biased in one way to be held fully credible. Public opinion is going to see it as whitewash. If the MoD was criticised, and Hoon sacrificed, the report would have been accepted as is.