BBC I: The Sultan of Spin Spun

The _Guardian's_ Emily Bell makes some fair points today about the wider
implications of the Dodgy Dossier. Like the war itself, the government's row
with the BBC is far from being a black-and-white affair, and personally I
think the recent history of the Corporation includes several important wrong
turns on questions of content and perceived mission. But one has to compare
favorably the BBC's determination to take investigative reporting
seriously - even if this means estrangement from a government that
ultimately oversees its charter - with the toe-curling cowardice exhibited
by the American networks in the past year. Broadcast journalism is
*supposed* to make people in power angry and uncomfortable - which would
apparently be a breaking headline to the assembled news teams of ABC, CBS,
NBC, et al, who throughout the Iraq war seemed more interested in which one
of them could construct the most obsequious red-white-'n'-blue montage for
their soft-focus non-stories.

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War claims row: Comment: Media enemies spin out of control: By Emily Bell.
Guardian, June 27.

Somewhere in the BBC, maybe in the desk of Ann Sloman, its chief political
adviser, there is a dossier of correspondence between the government, or
more particularly No 10 Downing Street and the corporation.

This may be a slim volume or a bulging file. We know it exists because the
lobby briefing given to journalists yesterday mentioned "extensive private
correspondence" with the Beeb on the tricky issue of the document which may
or may not have been sexed up.

The interesting thing about Alastair Campbell's assertions and the BBC's
rebuttals is that we may never know what form this private dialogue took.
This despite the fact that the public both paid for Andrew Gilligan's
original story and also paid for the government time expended in seeking to
destroy it, and to some extent the credibility of the BBC. Campbell's
bravura performance showed his own contempt for objective and truthful
reporting with a slip here and an aside there: an unsubstantiated and
unprovable claim that the BBC had an "anti-war agenda", his description of
the Mirror newspaper as anti-war and his description of the Sun not as
"pro-war" but "passionately supportive". There is also his dark intonation
that there were serious concerns among senior people within the BBC about
the original story.

Journalistic antipathy towards a man addicted to spin is hard to suppress.
Particularly when one remembers that almost a year ago Downing Street was
dropping a submission to the press complaints commission against the
Spectator and Peter Oborne for claims that the prime minister had sought an
enhanced role at the Queen Mother's funeral.

Another humiliation for Campbell, this time on the Mail on Sunday, was an
incorrect rebuttal of the claims that Cherie Booth had taken advice from
convicted conman Peter Foster.

Campbell's arrogant desire to do for Andrew Gilligan what Norman Tebbit once
did for Kate Adie (compiling a highly critical dossier on BBC coverage
following her reports of the bombing of Tripoli in 1986), makes one less
inclined to examine serious issues for the BBC.

It is quite legitimate to ask whether an independent licence-funded
broadcaster should run stories on the strength of one unattributable source.
Or indeed whether the corporation should be pursuing investigative
journalism at all, which, not only carries an agenda but shapes it too.

It is equally valuable to ask what kind of pressure a government puts on a
licence-funded broadcaster pre charter renewal through its "extensive
private correspondence". It is difficult to examine either of these very
important issues properly when the two participants are so closed in their
procedures and so opaque in their accountability.

Campbell and Blair do not demonstrate much respect for the free press and no
tolerance of the inevitable fact that as more reporters actually go to war
than cabinet ministers and special advisers, that their view is occasionally
going to be different.

Equally, the BBC seldom apologises for anything and has an unfortunate
tendency to adopt its own spin instead of exposing its procedures to more
debate and analysis. Arrogance runs through the taps of White City every bit
as much as it flows into the gutters of Whitehall.

The attempts to discredit and humiliate Gilligan personally instead of
legitimately question editorial processes of the BBC is particularly
despicable. What the affair highlights more than anything else is that
unless and until we have a greater respect - or even proper legislation -
for freedom of information we will always have partial reporting.

But to deny journalists at the BBC the opportunity to investigate and break
stories makes a nonsense of its independent status.

Both the BBC and Campbell are communicators on a grand scale, but they are
both found wanting in terms of openness and accountability. This is the real
lesson at the heart of the dodgy dossiers.

"Alan Allport" <allport.RemoveThis@sasdot.upenndot.edu> wrote in message
news:bdias9$a1ho$1@netnews.upenn.edu...
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 >
 > War claims row: Comment: Media enemies spin out of control: By Emily
Bell.
 > Guardian, June 27.
 >
 > Or indeed whether the corporation should be pursuing investigative
 > journalism at all, which, not only carries an agenda but shapes it
too.
 >

Rather bizarre statement, don't you think? "Not only carries an
agenda, but shapes it too"? Agenda, singular? Truth? Okay. Something
else? Not okay.

If journalists were to cease investigating would they cease to publish
or simply report the propaganda of those in power, i.e. someone else's
agenda?

Hay<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->