Sorry about this but it’s more Savile….it does seem that the BBC are interfering with the due process of any inquiry into this affair……

The BBC have announced two inquiries into the Savile business looking at whether the BBC was in any way to blame and why the Newsnight investigation was pulled.

However judging by what I have seen and heard and what some of the comments here are saying it would seem that the BBC has already decided and is on a mission to ‘fix’ the public’s perceptions regardless of the inquiries’ outcome.

It is wheeling in the big guns in a damage limitation exercise that is set on muddying the waters and massaging the truth.

We’ve had John Humphrys  suggesting it was all so long ago and in a culture that is long gone, we’ve had Joan Bakewell  spinning the same line….

“We were all padded, pinched, stroked, the whole female sex was available in those days – not willingly so – in the 1960s. It was how you treated women.”

But perhaps not how you treated 11,12,13, 14 year old girls…and boys.

Tory MP Rob Wilson delving deeper stated on the same programme that:  ‘There was a culture in the BBC of Senior BBC management targeting younger female employees’……and he rightly says that other organisations also have many questions to answer but that doesn’t mean the BBC should escape from also providing answers.

And we’ve had Victoria Derbyshire doing a double act  (45 mins) with ex-Today editor Kevin Marsh.

Derbyshire herself pre-empts the inquiry possible findings by stating that Newsnight dumped the programme because of ‘editorial reasons’……she reads out a few texts or emails that are against the BBC but the only callers that get through are pro-BBC…however she does read out this classic…..

‘Apart from harbouring tax dodgers and paedophiles the BBC does a cracking job’.

She then brings in Kevin Marsh to spread his own form of oil upon troubled waters….he has difficulty with recognising, or admitting the truth…..Derbyshire fed Marsh the questions and got the required answers…nothing to see here, move along.  It is quite apparent that programmes such as this are meant to make people’s minds up about the BBC’s role long before any inquiry comes up with its own answers.

The BBC is acting as judge and jury in its own defence….and strangely enough finding all the evidence points to an acquittal.

KM:  There will always be people who will be suspicious of big organisations and believe in conspiracy….having been inside the BBC for 30 years I know that is not true about the BBC’….he then comes up with his own conspiracy theory….’It is a commercial (Murdoch?) or political (Conservatives?) conspiracy against the BBC…no matter what the BBC says, it will be at fault’……he said it was ‘very easy to get angry about something for the sake of a newspaper column.’

So it’s all just a big conspiracy….firstly by anyone who just doesn’t trust ‘Big Organisations’ and secondly by Dark Forces opposed to the BBC seeking to attack it….and its all really about false anger drummed up to fill a few column inches.

KM:  I believe George Entwistle when he said he didn’t interfere with Newsnight because it is part of the BBC’s makeup to be rigorously independent and to avoid allegations of interference…it’s not the way the BBC works for bosses to interfere…..There’s no question that Newsnight wasn’t pressured to drop the investigation…there were sound editorial reasons for it not to go ahead…..The investigation wasn’t even complete really, not a film ready to go….if we’d gone ahead and been wrong it would have been catastrophic.

That’s OK then….he believes Entwistle, the BBC is rigorously independent, and it was an internal Newsnight editorial policy to abandon the investigation.

No need for any inquiry at all then…it’s just an exercise in ‘seeing justice being done’…all a waste of time and money….as ‘Auntie’ is so trusted and respected it of course could never really be found to have done anything wrong.

Marsh has his version…but other BBC sources say otherwise:…let’s have Derbyshire & Co interviewing them…..

‘Questions remain about just why Newsnight editor Peter Rippon took the decision to stop the report, and how close it was to completion when he did so. On Sunday Kevin Marsh, a former editor of Today who has now left the BBC, wrote a blog that was sympathetic to Rippon. “When the Newsnight editor paused the investigation, it was still at the evidence-gathering stage… evidence he was beginning to have doubts about,” wrote Marsh. “In other words, there was nothing to ‘pull’ – there was an investigation in progress and it had hit a brick wall. There was no script, even, in spite of what’s been reported in the press.”

Meirion Jones, the then Newsnight producer who was putting together the Savile report (and who is now working on a new Savile investigation for Panorama), declined to comment when contacted by The Daily Telegraph. But Pollard will want to ask Jones whether Marsh’s version of events is correct, or whether Jones’s Newsnight report was – as some BBC sources continue to insist – actually at a more advanced stage (and therefore less easy to shelve for genuine “editorial reasons”).’

The revelation that the Gay Girl in Damascus is actually a stubbly bloke in Edinburgh has sent shockwaves through the media.

That serious journalists fell for MacMaster’s fiction speaks to a profound crisis of objectivity in the modern media, and a preference for simplistic moralism over the tough task of reporting.

The trend for transforming other people’s struggles into self-serving morality plays has led to an alarmingly casual attitude towards the distinction between truth and lies.

Self serving morality plays.  Sums up the BBC’s journalism in one snappy little phrase….for instance events in Boston are being used by the BBC to ‘educate and inform’ us about the real Islam and the Muslim community and to suppress any criticism of the Islamic ideology.

Mark Mardell has played his part in this type of journalism but seems upset when called out on it.

 Here I have to assume Mark Mardell has wrongly named a post  on this blog as meriting this description:

 What a disgusting website ! Talk about lies and bias!

I guess when the BBC wrote this it should have included its North American Editor and itself in the firing line:

‘The trouble is, though, the British newspaper journalist has no history of taking criticism well… or working out what it is that needs to be done to turn a dysfunctional, distrusted press into something that performs a useful public purpose.’

I can only think Mardell’s lazy and careless journalism is emblematic of the BBC’s recent activity.

No explanation from Mardell as to where the lies and bias are in the post…or on the site for that matter.

Typical of the BBC these days when it relies more on views, opinions and comment than on facts….a BBC famously one of the most reliant on ‘Churnalism’…the use of verbatim Press Releases to pad out its own efforts…despite having as Mark Thompson said more journalists than any organisation outside of China.

We all remember Paxman telling us all about it in 2007:

“In this press of events there often isn’t time to get out and find things out: you rely upon second-hand information-quotes from powerful vested interests, assessments from organisations which do the work we don’t have time for, even, god help us, press releases from public relations agencies. The consequence is that what follows isn’t analysis. It’s simply comment, because analysis takes time, and comment is free.”

Nick Davies in the Guardian tells us that :

Our media have become mass producers of distortion

An industry whose task should be to filter out falsehood has become a conduit for propaganda and second hand news

Although he only targeted the newspaper industry Davies could just have easily included the rest of the Media…including the BBC.

The BBC’s Kevin Marsh (Editor of Today when it made false claims about the 45 minute claims in the Iraq War Dossier…so should know about journalistic ethics!) in his new role at the BBC College of Journalism jumps on the band wagon showing no awareness of the BBC’s own  abysmal record……

Journalism, not ‘churnalism’

But here Marsh gets to the heart of the matter, the very essence of why the BBC so often gets it wrong…though of course he isn’t talking about his precious BBC…..

‘Trust resides in the journalist’s motivation in selecting the facts he/she does and in the realisation of that motivation.’

Every time you see a BBC report or article it is apparent that you also need to ask ‘What is the journalist’s motive for framing the report in this way?’  Is it anti-austerity, pro-immigration, pro-Europe or pro-Islam? etc.

You can no longer trust the BBC’s journalism, you can no longer believe that it comes to you impartial and unadulterated by the BBC’s own views and political prejudices. 

But you may say ‘So what, the BBC is biased…how does that effect my life or other’s?’

Mark Mardell might want to ask himself if he thinks this is disgusting……

How many Jews are attacked around the world because of anti-Semitism stoked and inflamed by the BBC’s reporting of Israel which demonises every Israeli action and turns Palestinians into eternal  and harmless victims?

How many elderly died during the extended cold spell because they had to turn their heating off due to its cost…a cost driven up by government green policies not just reported on favourably by the BBC but actively campaigned for?

How many people have been killed, raped, attacked, robbed or otherwise become victims of crime perpetrated by criminals who entered this country on the coat tails of the Labour Party open border immigration policy….once again supported by the BBC?

How many more patients will die in hospitals as the BBC supports the NHS unions in their battle to prevent reforms?

How many British soldiers and civilians died or were subject to attack because the BBC gave tacit support to extremist Muslims who propagated the isdea that they were merely bombing and killing because of ‘Western’ foreign policy and thereby encouraged radicalisation, especially by its angry attacks on the Iraq War?

Once you start thinking about it the BBC has been at the centre of many major political decisions in this country and has ‘aided and abetted’ in the deaths and disadvantaging of many people in this country and abroad as a result of those policies and decisions.

I don’t know what Mardell means by ‘disgusting’, but I know what I mean….it’s an organisation that puts itself and its own politics ahead of the interests of the people of this country, an organisation that has let its immense power and influence go to its head and is now politically, journalistically corrupt, functioning more as an arm of a ‘shadow’ state that has much of the real power in this land….subverting the elected government and ensuring the Left’s placemen in NGOs and in committees and foundations, that formulate and guide policy, get the right support and publicity…..Margaret Hodge may be a perfect example of someone who gets evermore supportive backing from the BBC.

As Janet Daley points out the BBC appointed itself the ‘official opposition’ in the 1980’s and seems to be carryng on in that stance ever since.

‘The BBC strategy of the 1980s when many of its spokesmen privately argued that since there was no opposition party worthy of the name – Labour having collapsed into internal division and Militant-inspired madness – the proper function of the media was to provide constant resistance to Thatcherism.’

In the 1970’s the Miners smashed and removed governments and intended to do so to Mrs Thatcher’s.   She drew a line in the sand and crushed the wreckers.

If it can be done to the overpowerful unions it can be done to the BBC by someone who has the nerve and will to do it.

The BBC, under Chris Patten’s leadership, in defiance of its promises and all expectations of it living up to its ideals, has developed a new strategy to defend its unique political and ‘commercial’ dominance….and in doing so has abandoned all pretence of working in the public interest and encouraging the public’s trust.

‘Kevin Marsh, Editor of the BBC College of journalism (not since 2011) stood before a class of around 40 students at the LSE Summer School and shared his experiences at the BBC – an organisation that stands as an inspiration for journalists around the world for the ethics and qualitative reporting it supports.

Finally, Marsh argued the case for the BBC, emphasizing the aspect of the public purpose of journalism.

“Truth and Accuracy, Impartiality, Independence, public interest and accountability” – stand as the founding principles of journalism at the BBC”.
He reinforced the fact that the BBC continues to religiously follow these principles of journalism. For me the most pertinent aspect of the talk revolved around the existence, the exploration and the persistent fight for the discipline of journalism.’

How times have changed at the BBC.

This morning listening to 5Live I heard the usual news and a balanced piece on the Newsnight fiasco by Torin Douglas…..the BBC then wheeled on a man named Tim Crook…..Senior Lecturer in Media Law & Ethics, Goldsmiths, University of London….who also happens to be a visiting lecturer on media law to BBC Training and College of Journalism since 1982.

His parting words were these:

‘They need to have a leadership that when mistakes happen they are managed not just on journalistic terms but on political and propaganda terms.’

It would seem the BBC have rapidly assimilated his ideas, put them into practise and are presently engaged in a highly political and commercial black propaganda campaign, if not ‘war’ with politicians and with, in particular, News Corporation.

Let’s see just how impartial Crook is…a man who actually lectures BBC staff at its own college, on media law and ethics……..

Tim Crook ?@libertarianspir
I have been trying to analyse and defend the BBC position on BBC Five Live Morning Report 9 mins 43 secs in http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0070hss …

 
Pretty clear where he stands.

The BBC Trust under the chairmanship of Chris Patten has announced that it will ‘get a grip’ of the BBC and work to rekindle public trust in the organisation.

What has it done to further that ambition?  It has admitted its journalism was seriously at fault, it has paid off George Entwistle, removed a few senior managers from the frontline and engaged in some inquiries.
That is the ‘mea culpa’ public face of the BBC which Patten is using to try and claim he is turning the organisation around.

Is that all that the BBC is doing?  Having heard Crook this morning a few other things started clicking into place and a pattern emerged from the smokescreen that was being laid by the BBC Trust.

That pattern indicated something that tells us that nothing has changed at the BBC and that far from accepting any ‘guilt’ they are playing the ‘victim card’ and claiming the BBC is the victim of political and commercial attacks……essentially a rerun of Hutton.

This was reinforced when I heard the Today programme where they wheeled on Phil Harding, the BBC’s former director of editorial policy, who said:

“Mistakes have been made in journalism everywhere, but we have to keep a sense of proportion…..There are some people in the press who love to give the BBC a good kicking because they don’t believe in its existence in the first place.”

This is from the BBC who engaged, in collusion with the Labour Party, in particular Tom Watson, and the Guardian, in an all out assault on one of their commercial and ideological rivals, News International, in an attempt to destroy it…. And which cost over 300 jobs and has seen 100 NI employees in the dock.

In response to The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh saying, quite reasonably, that the BBC was an organisation that presented a left wing view of the world and that the Newsnight programme was an attempt to smear the Tories whilst it wouldn’t have done the same to a Labour Peer, the BBC’s Harding claimed that was an ‘outrageous slur’.

He had just said he wanted to engage in discussion about the BBC….but as usual the BBC want to fix the terms of any debate and limit what can be said.

Talking about Leveson and ‘Press freedom’ Kavanagh said that Newsnight showed that Broadcasters were as capable of getting it wrong as newspapers were….and should come therefore under the same scrutiny as newspapers.

Harding replied that:  ‘Yes the BBC had made mistakes but we must keep a sense of proportion.  If we keep giving the BBC a kicking it will undermine  confidence in the BBC’s journalism and in journalism as a whole.’

Jim Naughtie added that: ‘There’s a danger of us all being pulled down if there’s too much mud slinging.’

I don’t remember such a reaction when News International was in the dock.

Kavanagh went on to say that the BBC had an institutional bias towards the liberal left and the BBC was unable to recognise this in itself…it had an ‘inbuilt lip curl directed with contempt towards anyone it disagreed with.’ and that the BBC would not have broadcast Newsnight had it of been a Labour peer instead of a Tory one…it was ‘wishful thinking rather than bad journalism’ that led to this disaster for the BBC.

Harding jumped in and claimed that was an ‘outrageous slur’…and that we are ‘maybe getting to the real agenda…not what mistakes in its journalism the BBC makes but whether it is too big and bloated, whether the BBC has institutional bias and whether it is too left wing…..if we’re going to have that debate let’s have it but don’t dress it up as looking at BBC mistakes.’

Harding and Naughtie provided a united front defending the BBC and adopting the BBC’s new stance in its defence….that it has made one mistake and that this is being used by politicians and its Press rivals to attack it.

This approach has obviously been ‘agreed’ at the highest level.  The BBC has held an emergency summit in which a new strategy has been thrashed out and put into operation.  This must have been signed off by Patten.

Not only have various ‘talking heads’ been brought in by the BBC to bolster their defence but as we can see Patten himself has taken up the cudgel in the BBC’s defence adopting that very strategy…of blaming politicians and other media organisations…or rather just  Murdoch…..

‘I don’t think Lord Patten helped himself by repeatedly attacking Rupert Murdoch during his round of media interviews this morning (see Spectator report).‘

Chris Patten has just appeared on the Andrew Marr Show to discuss the resignation of George Entwistle and to evaluate its fallout. Patten conceded that the BBC is mired in a mess of its own making and that it was inevitably under pressure as a result. He opened a media war while defending the BBC’s independence, saying that the corporation was ‘bound to be under fire from Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers’ and sceptical (Tory) MPs, adding later in the interview that Murdoch’s papers would be happy to see the BBC diminished.
And he renewed his assault on the Murdoch press, saying: ‘I’m not going to take my marching orders from Mr Murdoch’s newspaper.’ ‘

The warm up to this has been going on a few days…on the Daily Politics the BBC held a debate between ex Murdoch man Neil Wallis and Lawyer Charlotte Harris who have been sparring over the future of press regulation.
‘They both made an authored film for the Daily Politics, and have appeared in two TV debates together, which can all be seen on this page.
Charlotte Harris represents victims of phone hacking and has called for more regulation, while Neil Wallis argues that illegal actions of journalists are already covered by existing rules.’
I would suggest that the BBC’s favoured position is that proposed by Neil Wallis….I believe that they had absolutely no interest in ‘press regulation’ and are just as worried about Leveson’s rulings as Murdoch might be.  I think the BBC have the fullest intention of sidelining the victims of the hacking scandal and used that purely as a means to attack Murdoch….which it succeeded in doing.

Murdoch himself of course does have an interest in seeing the BBC brought under control…as he has tweeted recently:

Rupert Murdoch ?@rupertmurdoch
BBC mess gives Cameron golden opportunity properly reorganize great public broadcaster. Fast inquiry to Include both critics and supporters.

Neil Wallis said this….which is pretty much what seems to be the new BBC line….no press regulation as it is the thin end of the wedge….
Neil Wallis ?@neilwallis1
My blog on press freedom, based on the script of my BBC2 Daily Politics film today, is on front page of the Huff Post!

‘Make no mistake,  statutory regulation means state regulation and is the thin end of the wedge. Ignore the apologists who protest the changes they seek are inconsequential. Who brings in, draws up, and enacts the statutes they seek? Politicians, of course.
And once in place, those self-same politicians will be free in years to come to amend, adjust, tweak, ratify, clarify, fix, CENSOR those press laws to silence all those questions and inquiries they don’t want to answer.
A free press does make mistakes, gets things – including its behaviour – wrong. That can hurt – but the alternative is worse. To paraphrase, democracy is the worst kind of government… until you consider all the others. It is the same with a free press and self-regulation.
Let them steal it at your peril. ‘

The above is a longer version of an authored TV film by Neil Wallis broadcast on the Daily Politics programme on BBC2 on Thursday 8 November 2012.

And:
8 November 2012 Last updated at 12:51 Help
Former newspaper editor Neil Wallis, said “an unsavoury alliance” of celebrities, lawyers and politicians were getting together to limit press regulation for their own interests.
But he said new press laws would give MPs a press they could control, and allow politicians to silence questions they did not want to answer.

But let’s remember who Neil Wallis is….apart from an ex Murdoch man what else has he done since?….he ran the PR spin campaign for the University of East Anglia’s CRU after ‘ClimateGate’…….suddenly stories of Prof Phil Jones getting death threats appeared in the papers and similar tales of woe intended to generate public sympathy were manufactured to support the CRU’s climate change ideology.

The BBC have even dragged in their old sparring partner Labour’s Alistair Campbell to support them…in news bulletins he is quoted saying:  ‘the BBC must be defended and not reduced in size or effectiveness….other media which are attacking the BBC have vested interests in doing so.’

So again we have that same posturing…a BBC under threat from ‘dark forces’….as Harding said : “Mistakes have been made in journalism everywhere, but we have to keep a sense of proportion….There are some people in the press who love to give the BBC a good kicking because they don’t believe in its existence in the first place.”

I think it might be wise to remember that Campbell is practically employed by the BBC which relentlessly plugged his book as well as using him to front many of their programmes.

This all comes together to point to a coherent and deliberate plan to spike any attempt to force the BBC to change other than on its own terms.  It has no intention of being held to account by anyone and believes in its own sanctity…it believes it is beyond the reach of the temporal world almost….practically a religion…indeed the journalists there I think, see themselves as the new priesthood issuing forth guidelines to the lesser mortals who otherwise wouldn’t be capable of living their lives in a moral and ethical manner, as defined by the BBC….and as such the BBC are themselves beyond reproach and unaccountable to anyone.

The BBC Trust is acting in a way that is directly in opposition to the rationale for its existence and the rules it is supposed to enforce.
It is, far from admitting any mistakes or innate, wilfully partial tendencies at the BBC,  reinforcing and defending such an attitude on behalf of the journalists and is failing utterly in its role as defender of the Public interest.

The Trust has deliberately engaged in a campaign of black propaganda not just against other media organisations but against politicians, government and the judiciary.

The BBC has tried to set itself up as untouchable and so precious to the nation that to attempt to control it or rein it in in any way will lead to the end of democracy as we know it.

What this demonstrates is that the BBC is betraying the trust placed in it by the Public and are solely concerned with defending their own political, commercial social, cultural and ideological positions.

The BBC is all about trust, openness and accountability, if it no longer operates to such standards and works in a way that is solely in its own interest, pushing a political message rather than acting to inform debate then it has lost its reason to be ‘special’ and uniquely funded….as it does nothing that a commercial station couldn’t do and probably do better and cheaper……

‘This existential crisis exists because there’s no longer any ideological reason to keep the BBC around, so every argument about its power has to focus on its practical ability to do good. If the BBC can’t keep to the extraordinarily high standards the British public has for it, it may be beginning a slow and painful journey to privatization like other nationalized British industries before it.’

It might also be worthwhile challenging the definition of what exactly  ‘for purposes of journalism, art or entertainment’ means exactly.…for everything the BBC does is aimed to those ends…and therefore subject to that qualification in the FOI Act.  How can it be open and transparent if it can so easily hide away its dirty secrets?

Back to BBC supporter Tim Crook (at 9 mins 45 secs in )….here is the full transcript of his broadcast on behalf of the BBC this morning…..one that ticks most boxes in the BBC box of tricks….Austerity, Hutton, Murdoch.

First some tweets to add some colour to the picture:

Tim Crook ?@libertarianspir
It would be awful if Helen Boaden turned out to be the best Director General the BBC never had

Tim Crook ?@libertarianspir
Seems to me politicians think they own the BBC & decide what happens next there & elsewhere in journalism. That’s not democracy surely?

Tim Crook ?@libertarianspir
I’d make Helen Boaden DG- and Kevin Marsh as Director of Journalism- Journalism needs ascendency, independence & investment at BBC

The transcript:

‘George Entwistle was pulled down by not being able to marshal the BBC to cope with this new aggressive political tactic which is to take one mistake made by a media organisation and expand it out as if it is a general issue and an extremely important problem.

It started in a big way with ‘HackGate’ and that’s how Leveson came about.  I think politicians in recent years have learned how to deflect, to throw up smoke screens and attack journalism and the media.
Particularly at a time when journalism and the media are particularly vulnerable.…vulnerable because of Austerity because multi media organisations are struggling to find an economic model for digitisation and there is an evacuation of key advertising to the Internet.

The BBC has been substantially vulnerable since Hutton when a New labour government employed classic propaganda techniques to humble it.
that was combined with judicial public enquiry where the terms of reference were politically and narrowly defined.
So I think we’re seeing an ongoing repetition of a growth of political power on the part of politicians against the Media.

Recently the BBC has been a casualty of that.
The problem for the BBC is that it is owned by the Public but is more harshly shackled to the political world than It has been in the past.  The Chairman is a Conservative politician at a time when we have a Conservative/Lib/Dem Coalition and I think that’s a key issue.

I think the BBC is in a process of necessity but it is learning a desperately hard lesson.  Not only the BBC but any newspaper organisation now has learned that they are under attack and are vulnerable to the Legislature, the Executive and Judiciary.
They need to be much more disciplined, they need to be more politically savvy.
They need to have a full understanding of the political ground as well as the journalistic infrastructure and culture of their own organisation.
They need to have a leadership that when mistakes happen they are managed not just on journalistic terms but on political and propaganda terms.’

Oh Dear what can the matter be?  Was it all Tim Davie’s fault?

Kevin Marsh, ex Today Ed. explains……

Remember, George Entwistle told John Humphrys in the fatal Today interview that the Newsnight McAlpine film had been signed off “at management board level” – normally it would have been what’s known in the BBC as the News Board, usually chaired by the Head of News, Helen Boaden. The BBC Trust Chairman, Lord Patten, told Andrew Marr something similar.

Now, the line of command upwards from Newsnight prior to the Savile row was: Editor of Newsnight (Peter Rippon) – Head of News Programmes (Steve Mitchell) – Head of News (Helen Boaden) – Director General (George Entwistle)

Once Rippon had “stepped aside” and other News executives ‘recused’ themselves, that line of command on ‘recused’ matters became: acting Editor of Newsnight (??) – Head of Newsgathering (Fran Unsworth) – Director of World Service (Peter Horrocks … replaced during Horrocks’s annual leave by Adrian van Klaveren, the controller of R5Live) – Director of Audio and Music (Tim Davie). That meant Davie was effectively editor-in-chief on ‘recused’ matters.

It appears from what I learnt this morning that the Newsnight McAlpine film was judged to fall within the ‘recused’ area … and that, therefore, it was dealt with by the temporary management structure and not the regular one.

If that’s the case, then many of the questions over the McAlpine film that John Humphrys fired so effectively at George Entwistle – who declined to raise the complications of ‘recusation’ as any defence – might just as properly be put to the new acting Director General, Tim Davie.

Sort of interesting day if you like to listen to the BBC relentlessly eviscerating itself  whilst at the same time  they try to apply a field dressing to the gaping wound and carry on as if nothing happened.

There are though still plenty of attempts to play down the Savile affair and the subsequent Newsnight bungle.

Nicky Campbell suggested that no one knew a thing about Savile, not a clue…the general view at the BBC was that he had been a ‘benign eccentric’.

 If you ever wondered why complaining to the BBC Governors or the BBC Trust rarely resulted in any meaningful action you only had to listen to Sir Christopher Bland and Sir Michael Lyons telling us what a load of old hooey over nothing very much all this is…..Lyons tells us it is all really just the Press kicking up sand and taking a swipe at the BBC.

Not that the BBC ever engaged in attacking Murdoch’s or any other news papers.

Richard Bacon dragged in the man with a distant relationshiop to the truth, Kevin Marsh, yet again, and also Ben Fenton from the lefty FT….who also suggested a similar line to Lyons…no story really just the Press trying to lessen the case for regulation under Leveson  because if good old Aunty Beeb can make mistakes well so can anyone….so no need for tighter regulation says Fenton…its a tabloid agenda not a real story about the BBC and Savile.

He tells us, and Bacon jumps aboard, what happened was only a series of marginal mistakes…sins of ommission not commission…unlike the evil Murdoch papers who plotted their nefarious deeds deliberately.

However I would suggest if you knew something about Savile, and it seems many did KNOW, then to look away and do nothing is not ommission it is commission…you have decided to ignore abuse.

It does look, before Panorama goes to air, that George Entwistle was either remiss in not doing his job or he is lying about not knowing or asking about Newsnight’s investigation.  When Helen Boaden told him he might have to change his programme  schedule because of the Newsnight programme surely he would have to ask her to justify that….or is his trust in Helen Boaden so great that he just bows down before her…in the jealously guarded realms of televison?

Peter Rippon’s future doesn’t look too bright on the evidence so far….inaccurate and incomplete explanation of why he cancelled the Newsnight programme…..and the emails reveal senior management involvement in decision making….long denied by all.

Something else that Rippon said is of interest, and ironic all considered….he was keen to look at the CPS’ reasons for not going ahead with their prosecution…because it showed ‘ institutional failure’…which was a strong story…and more interesting. 

That does shine a little light into the BBC thinking…always keen to undermine other Institutions in the interest of better telly.

All in all not a brilliant day for the management and panjandrums of the BBC….but credit where credit is due…except to Bacon and perhaps Campbell….many have worked hard on digging into the heart of this tale and have not shied away from the bad news.

Can only hope Panorama does a proper job and doesn’t come up with the jaded formula of  ‘Yes we did wrong but it wasn’t all that bad really, the times and culture etc, it happened in alot of other places as well not just the BBC, and we have changed our ways since…unlike the grubby Redtops!’….which has been the constant refrain from the BBC in their own defence so far.

This post claims BBC bias in its reporting of the run up to the 2003 Iraq War and the compilation of the Dossier that gave the case for war.

It also explains why, in my opinion, that is ‘bias’ and the effect such bias has upon not only politics but also the literal life and death issues for not just the troops fighting the wars but also the civilians in the UK who face serious threats from Islamic terrorism that could be the result of the BBC’s  false claims.　

It also highlights one of the major advantages the BBC has….it has the platform to keep repeating its ‘Legend’ until that legend becomes ‘Fact’.

The post is long.

‘Ludlow, who was rather an enthusiast for liberty than a fanatic in religion—that brave man, who hated Cromwell more than he did Charles I., relates that the parliamentary forces were always defeated by the royal army in the beginning of the civil war.

…….Cromwell said to General Fairfax: “How can you possibly expect a rabble of London porters and apprentices to resist a nobility urged on by the principle, or rather the phantom, of honor? Let us actuate them by a more powerful phantom—fanaticism! Our enemies are fighting only for their king; let us persuade our troops they are fighting for their God.”

“Give me a commission, and I will raise a regiment of brother murderers, whom I will pledge myself soon to make invincible fanatics!”

He was as good as his word; he composed his regiment of red-coated brothers, of gloomy religionists, whom he made obedient tigers. Mahomet himself was never better served by soldiers.

But in order to inspire this fanaticism, you must be seconded and supported by the spirit of the times.

Who creates that ‘spirit of the times’?

Who is it that ‘manufactures the consent’ that gives the nod to certain people of a certain ideology that they have just cause for complaint and although the methods adopted may be wrong the Cause is great, just and honourable?

The BBC.

The BBC is one of the most powerful media organisations in the world…all the more so because of the inherent ‘trust’ and credibility vested in it that gives its output so much more authority and veracity….so much clout.

The BBC does not act alone….but it provides the cover for its fellow travellers to act under. It prevents open debate and discussion by suppressing information that is contrary to its agenda, if the information gets out it does all it can to discredit the messenger and by association the message.

Many political, cultural and social changes are ‘forced’ upon the people by an ‘elite’ who can do almost what they like because the people are denied a real voice in what happens in their own country.

That Voice should be provided by the BBC…but not only does the BBC not challenge ‘Power’ it actively suppresses the Voices of opposition who do want to challenge that ‘Power’.

Fanaticism can only thrive in an environment that is friendly to it.

Mao said ‘The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fishswims in the sea.”, Thatcher told us that the terrorist needs the oxygen of publicity, the Taliban are invisible because they ‘are the people’, they are able to do what they do because the local people in Helmand support them even if for a variety of reasons.

The Muslims terrorist, insurgent, militant or extremist has thrived for over a decade, not only in Muslim countries but in the West as well, and not only because they are able to hide ‘as fish’ in their own community.

Their biggest ally is the western intellectual, the Liberal apologist for Empire and all that, the socialist who makes friends with anyone who is an enemy of capitalism. These groups give support and encouragement to the Muslim extremist. They are spread throughout society in positions of power and influence…in the media, in government, in academia, in schools and local government.

Orwell spells it out better than I could in this tract  which describes the same groups of people pre-war and their inability to grasp the danger they were in:

‘They could not struggle against Nazism or Fascism, because they could not understand them. Neither could they have struggled against Communism, if Communism had been a serious force in Western Europe. To understand Fascism they would have had to study the theory of Socialism, which would have forced them to realize that the economic system by which they lived was unjust, inefficient and out of date. But it was exactly this fact that they had trained themselves never to face. They dealt with Fascism as the cavalry generals of 1914 dealt with the machine gun – by ignoring it.

Even when they had begun to grasp that Fascism was dangerous, its essentially revolutionary nature, the huge military effort it was capable of making, the sort of tactics it would use, were quite beyond their comprehension.

This vein of political ignorance runs right through English official life, through Cabinet ministers, ambassadors, consuls, judges, magistrates, policemen. The policeman who arrests the “Red” does not understand the theories the “Red” is preaching…… There is reason to think that even military espionage is hopelessly hampered by ignorance of the new economic doctrines and the ramifications of the underground parties.

It is important not to misunderstand their motives, or one cannot predict their actions. What is to be expected of them is not treachery or physical cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing. They are not wicked, or not altogether wicked; they are merely unteachable.’

The BBC is one of those who ‘do not understand’, who are ignorant…in this case of Islam and the realities preached in the name of that ideology….and they are ‘unteachable’ as to the effects of allowing such an ideology to flourish and expand in a secular or non-Muslim State.

The BBC provides the ‘sea’ that the terrorist swims in, they provide the intellectual, cultural, social and political, as well as the legal, justifications for Islamic extremists to operate under safely.

The BBC provides the ‘Spirit of the Times’ that justifies and ‘understands’, though doesn’t condone, murder in the name of Islam.

It provides the oxygen of publicity and pro-Islamic coverage and anti-Western rhetoric that lends authority, credibility to the Divine Sanction the terrorists already believe they have.

The BBC opposed the Afghanistan War from the beginning and then moved on to do its utmost to prevent the Iraq War from starting.

This opposition and the barrage of negative coverage about the war altered the Public’s perceptions about the legality and the wisdom of the whole enterprise….this resulted in the government becoming reluctant to put the necessary resources into fighting the war as to do so would have the likes of the BBC again turn its guns upon them and yet more negative ‘press’ and huge public pressure.

The effect of this was that an under resourced army had insufficient men and equipment, as well as lack of will, to carry out the tasks set for it such as securing Basra….this continued into the Afghan theatre of war where such shortages meant that the Taliban roamed at will and re-established themselves becoming ever stronger with the possibility that we will be forced out of Afghanistan shortly with our tail between our legs.

The second significant effect was that the BBC’s coverage….which worked to label the war illegal whilst at the same time accepting Muslim claims that their own actions were purely a response to not only ‘illegal’ wars but also to decades, if not centuries of western imperialism and oppression of Muslims countries…..legitimised extremist’s actions and terrorism to a large extent as well as providing credibility and authority to those recruiting more extremists or terrorists.

This continuous justification and legitimisation of Muslim grievances led to thousands of Muslims flocking to Iraq and the prolonging of a very nasty war of terror after Saddam’s regime had fallen….as well as thousands more recruits to Al Qaeda and its subsidiaries around the globe all believing they had ‘just cause’.

The most extreme example of the BBC’s eagerness to damn the war was the exchange between Andrew Gilligan and John Humphrys on the Today programme concerning the claim that Iraq had biological or chemical weapon systems that could deploy within 45 minutes.

This claim saw the resignation of BBC Director General Greg Dyke, the implementation of the Neil Report  and wholesale changes of procedures including the setting up of the BBC journalism college.

The BBC was found to be at fault for allowing the exchange to occur by the Hutton Inquiry, and though accepting the blame the BBC has ever since worked to change the public’s perceptions about those events and now blatantly claims it was right all along….that the government did know the claims about the 45 minute deployment time was wrong and had been included purely to ‘sex up’ its case for war in its ‘dodgy dossier’.

The latest attempt has been by the ex-editor of Today at the time of these events, Kevin Marsh, who has written a book, Stumbling Over Truth: The inside story of the sexed-up dossier, Hutton and the BBC, and who has been doing the rounds….I heard him on Richard Bacon’s show last Thursday …..Marsh claims that Gilligan was telling the truth.

However, Marsh is not.

Rentoul in the Independent…1….2…3

‘Kevin Marsh’s book, Stumbling Over Truth, tells of his time as editor of the BBC Todayprogramme in 2003 when it broadcast Andrew Gilligan’s report about the Iraq dossier. It is a savage condemnation of how a cabal of people in positions of power, their certainty reinforced by groupthink, sexed up an important piece of work, including in it things that they knew were wrong.

I refer to Marsh, Gilligan and their superiors at the BBC. Rarely has a book intended to make the case for one side in a controversy been so damning of the case it seeks to defend.’

Before I get into this here is a quote about the inclusion of the 45 minute claim from Dr Brian Jones, the head of the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons section in the Scientific and Technical Directorate of the Defence Intelligence Analysis Staff:

“The important point is that we at no stage argued that this intelligence should not be included in the dossier…..We thought it was important intelligence.”

Gilligan had embellished his story and Humphrys put the stamp of his authority upon it ensuring that it was headline news in every paper on every breakfast table the next day…and altering forever how people judged the legality of the war, the government’s execution of the war and just as significant, giving a boost to recruiters of Muslim terrorist organisations.

Here is the relevant part of that exchange between Gilligan and Humphrys:

JH: The government is facing more questions this morning over its claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Our defence correspondent is Andrew Gilligan. This in particular Andy is Tony Blair saying, they’d be ready to go within forty five minutes.

Andrew Gilligan (AG): That’s right, that was the central claim in his dossier which he published in September, the main erm, case if you like against er, against Iraqand the main statement of the British government’s belief of what it thought Iraq was up to and what we’ve been told by one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up that dossier was that…..

actually the government probably erm, knew that that forty five minute figure was wrong, even before it decided to put it in.

Downing Street, our source says ordered a week before publication, ordered it to be sexed up, to be made more exciting and ordered more facts to be er, to be discovered.

JH: When you say ‘more facts to be discovered’, does that suggest that they may not have been facts?

AG: Well, erm, our source says that the dossier, as it was finally published, made the Intelligence Services unhappy, erm, because, to quote erm the source he said, there was basically, that there was, there was, there was unhappiness because it didn’t reflect, the considered view they were putting forward, that’s a quote from our source and essentially, erm, the forty five minute point er, was, was probably the most important thing that was added. Erm, and the reason it hadn’t been in the original draft was that it was, it was only erm, it only came from one source and most of the other claims were from two, and the intelligence agencies say they don’t really believe it was necessarily true because they thought the person making the claim had actually made a mistake, it got, had got mixed up.

AG: Well the forty five minutes isn’t just a detail, it did go to the heart of the government’s case that Saddam was an imminent threat and it was repeated four times in the dossier.

John Humphrys claims Blair said Saddam ‘threatened us all’…..

JH: Twenty eight minutes to eight. Tony Blair had quite a job persuading the country and indeed his own MPs to support the invasion of Iraq; his main argument was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that threatened us all.  None of those weapons has been found. Now our defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan, has found evidence that the government’s dossier on Iraq that was produced last September, was cobbled together at the last minute with some unconfirmed material that had not been approved by the Security Services.

Gilligan confirms the statement that the Government was ‘lying’……

JH: Are you suggesting, let’s be very clear about this, that it was not the work of the intelligence agencies.

AG: No, the information which I’m told was dubious did come from the agencies, but they were unhappy about it, because they didn’t think it should have been in there.

AG: But you know, it could have been an honest mistake, but what I have been told is that the government knew that claim was questionable, even before the war, even before they wrote it in their dossier.

Marsh claims that Gilligan only made the claim that the government lied once…and that it was a mistake…however he repeated it on a later BBC programme…and in the Daily Mail…..so not just a slip of the tongue.

A later interview on the BBC:

AG: Em, now, you know, what I thought to be honest was that that eh, that claim was wrong in good faith. Em, but er, what my intelligence service source says is that em essentially they were always suspicious about this claim, they did not want it to appear in the document.

Presenter: So, I mean the implications that the, that Downing Street asked for it to be hyped up to help convince the doubters.

AG: Yeah, and, and they’re not very happy……But the 45 minutes was very important because it went to the heart of the Government’s case that Saddam was an imminent threat.

What were the issues raised by the BBC in these interviews?

1. That the government knew that the 45 minute claim was wrong.

2. That the 45 minute claim was central to the case made for war.

3. That the intelligence officers were not happy with the claim being included.

4. That the single source for the claim was a problem.

5. That Saddam threatened the UK directly.

Gilligan claims that the government knew the 45 minute claim was wrong but proceeded to include it anyway in order to sex up the dossier. He also insists repeatedly that the 45 minute claim was central to the government’s case against Saddam.

Both claims are nonsense.

In the intelligence the 45 minutes was at the top end of the suggested time for weaon deployment….the quickest they believed the weapons could be deployed was in 20 minutes…this was not in the dossier….if they were sexing it up they would have used the 20 minute figure….they would also have included a reference to the possibility of a weapon using smallpox as suggested by David Kelly himself…this was not included in the dossier as there was inadequate intelligence to back it up.

Greg Dyke himself admits in his autobiography that he had lunch with a senior intelligence officer who said that he had complete confidence in the reliability of the 45 minute intelligence.

What did the 45 minute claim mean anyway?

It referred to battlefield weapons not strategic missiles…in other words weapons that would be used against ground troops….in other words there was the possibility that they could be used against any Allied invading force.

Far from being ‘sexed up’ the dossier was providing a warning to any reader that should the invasion go ahead Saddam might use chemical or biological weapons and he may be able to deploy them so quickly that he couldn’t be stopped, with obvious dangers for Allied troops.

So not sexed up but a warning about the dangers of the war…the complete reverse of sexed up.

Was the claim ‘central’ to the dossier’s case for war as Gilligan repeatedly claimed?

No. It was a very small part of the dossier…it was mentioned three times….but other intelligence had similar repeat mentions but the BBC doesn’t highlight those…..Uranium sourced from Niger, Saddam’s attempts to conceal weapons, that Saddam attaches great importance to possession of WMD, that Iraq could deliver chemical and biological weapon attacks, and the human rights infringements including the use of chemical weapons…all repeated several times.

The case for war was made on the basis that Saddam had breached UN Resolution 1441 and had failed to co-operate with the UN inspectors and had continued to produce or attempt to produce WMD….it was not made based on the speed at which he could deploy battlefield weapons.

Humphrys went on to ’embellish’ Gilligan’s report by claiming that the dossier said that Blair’s ‘main argument was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that threatened us all.’

That was not what Blair said….the dossier stated that Saddam presented a danger to British interests….that would most probably mean Saudi Arabia and its oil fields which Saddam wanted to take over as he had tried to with Kuwait’s….and possibly a danger to British bases on Cyprus which had come into range of Saddam’s new rockets.

Were caveats removed as Marsh says?

Look at the dossier…it has many caveats suggesting that the intelligence has uncertainties….this dossier was for the consumption of MPs who would then vote on the decision to go to war…they are all experienced people who would understand that no intelligence can be 100%.

Gathering intelligence inside Iraq is not easy.

Saddam’s is one of the most secretive and dictatorial regimes in the world.

What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons, and that he has been able to extend the range of his ballistic missile programme.

Intelligence reports make clear that he sees the building up of his WMD  strategic interests, and in particular his goal of regional domination. (Emphasising the future threat not saying absolutely current)

This intelligence cannot tell us about everything. However, it provides a fuller picture of Iraqi plans and capabilities. It shows that Saddam Hussein attaches great importance to possessing weapons of mass destruction which he regards as the basis for Iraq’s regional power.

As a result of the intelligence we judge that Iraq has: ….These judgements reflect the views of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).

Intelligence rarely offers a complete account of activities which are designed to remain concealed. The nature of Saddam’s regime makes Iraq a difficult target for the intelligence services.

Intelligence, however, has provided important insights into Iraqi programmes and Iraqi military thinking. Taken together with what is already known from other sources, this intelligence builds our understanding of Iraq’s capabilities and adds significantly to the analysis already in the public domain.’

The dossier was stressing the importance Saddam placed on WMD as much as the hard intelligence.

It is clearly also saying that intelligence was difficult to obtain and that the final analysis was a matter of ‘judgement’ and provided ‘insight’ as much as hard intelligence.

Did Dr David Kelly say the things Gilligan claimed, in the manner Gilligan claimed and was he involved in the actual writing of the dossier or the intelligence process?

DK: I was not involved in the intelligence component in any way nor in the process of the dossier’s compilation.

My discussions have been entirely technical and factual and although the “45 minute deployment” issue has obviously been raised I have always given the honest answer that I do not know what it refers to and that I am not familiar with an Iraqi weapons system that it matches.

I can only conclude one of three things. Gilligan has considerably embellished my meeting with him; he has met with other individuals who truly were intimately associated with the dossier; or he has assembled comments from both multiple direct and indirect sources for his articles.

(As Kelly was Gilligan’s ‘single source’ for the story it would seem only the first conclusion can be possible).

Just how good as a weapon’s inspector was Dr David Kelly?

‘Among his fellow inspectors Dr Kelly was considered the consummate inspector. They admired him tremendously for his very effective interviewing technique; his encyclopaedic knowledge; and his determination to out the truth about the former Soviet and Iraqi biological weapons programmes.  Put another way, David’s colleagues were somewhat in awe of his skills as an inspector’.

What did David Kelly think of the Dossier?

‘I had no doubt about the veracity of it (the Dossier) was absolute….It is an accurate document, I think it is a fair reflection of the intelligence that was available and it’s presented in a very sober and factual way….it is well written.’

“I was personally sympathetic to the war because I recognised from a decade’s work the menace of Iraq’s ability to further develop it’s non-conventional weapons programmes…..We were 100% certain that Saddam had a biological weapons programme.”

Did, as the BBC claim, the scientists or intelligence people have a deep unease about the 45 minute claim?

DK: I do not feel “deep unease” over the dossier because it is completely coincident with my personal views on Iraq’s unconventional weapons capability.

Dr Brian Jones, the head of the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons section in the Scientific and Technical Directorate of the Defence Intelligence Analysis Staff:

BJ: The important point is that we at no stage argued that this intelligence should not be included in the dossier.

Q. Right.

BJ: We thought it was important intelligence. I personally thought that the word used in the main body of the text, that the intelligence indicated this was a little bit strong but I felt I could live with that,

As to claims that Alistair Campbell was completely ‘gung ho’ about the project and willing to say and do anything to get approval for the war here is a quote from a communication with Sir John Scarlett that suggests that was not so:

‘Please find below a number of drafting points. As I was writing this, the Prime Minister had a read of the draft you gave me this morning, and he too made a number of points. He has also read my draft foreword, which I enclose (he will want another look at it before finally signing it off but I’d appreciate your views at this stage).

He said he thought you’d done a very good job and it was convincing (though I pointed out that he is not exactly a “don’t know” on the issue).’

Was the 45 minute claim just ‘cobbled together’ into the dossier at the last minute?

From Sir John Scarlett’s questioning:

JS: ‘The 9th September assessment that intelligence indicates that chemical and biological munitions could be with military units and ready for firing within 20 to 45 minutes – that was the wording, the sense of which was accurately reflected in the redrafting on the 17th September of the dossier. That is the point I am making. They went back to the intelligence, the original intelligence, which contained no caveat of uncertainty. They went back to the way in which it was phrased in the 9th September assessment and they redrafted their main body of the dossier to come into line with that, which it had not been before, including the words “intelligence indicates that”.

Q. You say there was no element of uncertainty in this intelligence?

JS: Report, yes.

Did the fact that the intelligence came from a single source mean that it was not reliable or ‘good’ intelligence?

JS: You are talking as if the assessors sit there and operate in a vacuum. They do not. They are assessing individual intelligence reports against the background of their knowledge. This was a point of precision which was being given, a timing which was being given for the first time with precision, to an assessment which already existed about the capability of the Iraqi armed forces in this area. That is what assessment is about. There is too much emphasis on sources, single reporting. Assessment is a much more complicated thing than that and it takes many aspects into account, as has been explained many times to this Inquiry.

Are there serious repercussions resulting from false allegation s being bandied about by the Media?

Q. Would you agree that the more serious the allegation, the greater the care which you would expect the BBC to take to ensure that it can be properly supported?

A. Yes.

Q. These were exceptionally serious allegations, were they not?

A. Well, I think one thing I should make clear is that I do not think the programme or indeed the BBC, in those early weeks, ever took the wording of the 6.07 broadcast or that phrase within the 6.07 broadcast to be the definitive version of the allegations that we were making……. So I think the mindset on the programme, and I think this continued for some time afterwards, was that the definition of this item, in the BBC’s view, were the scripted versions of it and the 6.07 was something that had strayed from what we believed to be the core allegations we were making or that our source was making.

Q. Leaving aside the mindset of the programme, you very fairly accept the audience would not necessarily have perceived it the same way?

A. Indeed.

Q. In practice it is the most dramatic and gravest allegation which will attract the most attention rather than the allegation which is scripted?

A. Depending on how often it is repeated and how many people hear it, yes.

Q. Yes. But if you make a sufficiently dramatic allegation, other media will catch on to it, will they not?

A. They may do, yes.

Q. They are professional followers of each other’s copy, are they not?

A. They are.

Q. Now, you have already I think agreed in your earlier evidence, and indeed I think it is implicit in the evidence you have given today, that the 6.07 allegation that the Government probably knew that the 45 minutes point was wrong before putting it into the dossier was, in fact, going to strike people as an exceptionally grave allegation. I think you have accepted that?

A. It clearly had that effect.

Q. Yes. It was an attack, was it not, on its face, on the integrity of those who had been involved at the highest levels in the production of the dossier?

A. In the way it was phrased, it clearly would have had that effect.

And Lord Hutton’s final say:

The communication by the media of information (including information obtained by investigative reporters) on matters of public interest and importance is a vital part of life in a democratic society. However the right to communicate such information is subject to the qualification (which itself exists for the benefit of a democratic society) that false accusations of fact impugning the integrity of others, including politicians, should not be made by the media. Where a reporter is intending to broadcast or publish information impugning the integrity of others the management of his broadcasting company or newspaper should ensure that a system is in place whereby

his editor or editors give careful consideration to the wording of the report and to whether it is right in all the circumstances to broadcast or publish it. The allegations that Mr Gilligan was intending to broadcast in respect of the Government and the preparation of the dossier were very grave allegations in relation to a subject of great importance and I consider that the editorial system which the BBC permitted was defective in that Mr Gilligan was allowed to broadcast his report at 6.07am without editors having seen a script of what he was going to say and having considered whether it should be approved.

The BBC here is admitting that its reporting false information would have serious repercussions as the audience were likely to be badly misled by Gilligan’s an Humphrys’ false assertions and that this would spread rapidly and powerfully as the rest of the media took up the story…and thereby potentially altering the whole perception of events and the war…and then to go on to have damaging effects on not only the politics but for troops on the ground.

This is Dr David Kelly’s pre-war assessment of the danger presented to the world by Saddam Hussein and his regime:

‘Only regime change will avert the threat’

Here we reprint Dr David Kelly’s article, written days before the Iraq war, in which he assessed the threat from Saddam

The UN has been attempting to disarm Iraq ever since 1991 and has failed to do so. It is an abject failure of diplomacy with the split between France, China and Russia on the one hand, and Britain and the United States on the other, creating a lack of ‘permanent five’ unity and resolve., Iraq established an effective concealment and deception organisation which protected many undisclosed assets. In October 2002, Resolution 1441 gave Saddam Hussein an ultimatum to disclose his arsenal within 30 days. He admitted inspectors and, with characteristic guile, provided some concessions, but still refuses to acknowledge the extent of his chemical and biological weapons and associated military and industrial support organisations – 8,500 litres of anthrax VX, 2,160 kilograms of bacterial growth media, 360 tonnes of bulk chemical warfare agent, 6,500 chemical bombs and 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents remained unaccounted for from activities up to 1991. (Even these figures, it should be noted, are based in no small part on data fabricated by Iraq.)

There are indications that the programmes continue.

Iraq continues to develop missile technology, especially fuel propellents and guidance systems for long-range missiles. Iraq has recovered chemical reactors destroyed prior to 1998 for allegedly civilian activity, built biological fermenters and agent dryers, and created transportable production units for biological and chemical agents and the filling of weapons. Key nuclear research and design teams remain in place, even though it is assessed that Iraq is unable to manufacture nuclear weapons unless fissile material is available. 　

War may now be inevitable.

Some of the chemical and biological weapons deployed in 1991 are still available, albeit on a reduced scale. Aerial bombs and rockets are readily available to be filled with sarin, VX and mustard or botulinum toxin, anthrax spores and smallpox. More sophisticated weaponry, such as spray devices associated with drones or missiles with separating warheads, may be limited in numbers, but would be far more devastating if used.

The threat from Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons is, however, unlikely to substantially affect the operational capabilities of US and British troops. Nor is it likely to create massive casualties in adjacent countries. Perhaps the real threat from Iraq today comes from covert use of such weapons against troops or by terrorists against civilian targets worldwide. The link with al-Qaeda is disputed, but is, in any case, not the principal terrorist link of concern. Iraq has long trained and supported terrorist activities and is quite capable of initiating such activity using its security services.

The long-term threat, however, remains Iraq’s development to military maturity of weapons of mass destruction – something that only regime change will avert.

The Butler Report on the Iraq War Intelligence

Kevin Marsh is probably not a well-known name outside the rarified corridors of the BBC. But as head of the BBC’s College of Journalism and also a former editor of Radio 4’s Today, he’s one of the corporation’s top news wallahs, shortly due to retire on an obscenely fat pension. So how does he practise his trade? As a scion of public service broadcasting, with its binding principles of fairness and lack of bias? Er, no. Well not according to Antonia Hoyle, writing in today’s Mail on Sunday. Mr Marsh did not like former BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan’s (he who broke the story of the dodgy Iran intelligence dossier) rather positive entry on Wikipedia, so he doctored it, adding the telling phrase that his reputation for breaking news ‘was not always deserved’. Likewise, our Kev thought the Wiki entry for his predecessor as editor of Today, Rod Liddle, was a tad too nice. Originally the Liddle section said that he had used Today to ‘break’ new stories. Kev’s neatly edited version said that he had ‘tried with limited success to switch the programme to a more tabloid approach’. Maiow. That, in BBC speak is the highest form of insult.

Mr Gilligan claims that Mr Marsh is not happy with him because, as a result of the Hutton report – which considered the BBC’s handling of the Iraq dossier- his career as an editor ended and he became instead ‘deputy head of training’.

I should add that Mr Marsh strongly denies that he was acting inappropriately; he is quoted as saying he was merely ensuring accuracy. Of course. All I will say is that I made a number of complaints against Today items when dear Kev was editor, and attended meetings where he was there, so I saw his style first hand. His approach was always to bend the facts in every way he could.

A Michael Taylor, in the comments to the previous post, on the BBC. It’s not Paul Reynolds in disguise, is it ?

The agenda-setting is tedious for those who don’t share their world-view, but where it’s accompanied by the hard slog of good journalism – Channel 4 News for example – you agree to disagree and wish them well on their way.

Who believes these are the people to save the BBC?

B-BBC commenter Eamonn was in amusing form over today’s Today:

The Today team (pbut) is in fine form this morning. James Naughtie (pbuh) gives an Iraqi henchman of radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr a few minutes of prime time (around 7.15am) to peddle the most ridiculous conspiracy theory i.e. the CIA planted the bombs in the mosque. Rather than dismissing this (as he would any statement made by a law abiding centre-right politician)Naughtie (pbuh), rather than dismissing this, presents it as a possibility that we should sort of add to the possible narratives. For goodness sake Naughtie (pbuh)!

The BBC’s (pbut) idea of balance would be to interview David Irving (pbuh and taking a break from writing his version of “My Struggle” in prison) to hear his contrary view that it wasn’t the CIA, but the Jews (death be upon them) who planted the bombs. That’s the BBC idea of balance.

A couple of comments later, Michael Taylor explains why the acquiesence of the Today programme in this conspiracy theory is not actually that funny. Excerpt:

This is, I’d say, merely silly, if slightly dangerous. We may, after all, merely conclude that the interviewee was off his head. But having allowed the allegation to be made on their flagship morning program, the BBC has a journalistic duty to get a response from the accused. Ie, they are duty bound to fetch up some weary US army spokesman to point out that the allegation was barking. So why was no comparable effort made to secure a response from the party accused?

There are two possible responses (discounting the possibility that no-one would comment). The first and most likely is that they didn’t want to bother because the allegation was so ludicrous. If that’s their view, why did they allow it to propogated via the BBC’s prime morning programme in the first place? The second is that they didn’t want to because their point in running the interview was deliberately to slander and defame the US forces via al Sadr’s spokesman. In other words, those who made these choices (and who are they, let’s have names: Jim Naughtie was the presenter, Kevin Marsh was the editor) are either idiots or reckless slanderers.

And in this light, let’s hear again from Kevin Marsh on how he decides what gets on air: “I make up my own mind based on mine and the team’s assessment on the facts we have. We question everyone as thoroughly as we can, write our running orders based on our own judgements and invite the guests onto the programme who we think have something to add to the running stories.”

So, let’s have some answers, Mr Marsh. What was “the team’s assessment of the facts” in this case, and do you feel happy that your invitation to this particular guest had “something to add to the running stories.”

As it is, what we’re left with is an outrageous slander, which will quite possibly add to the death toll in Iraq, invited to be made, unanswered and unsupported, on the prime morning time programme of the taxpayer-funded broadcaster.

Emphasis added by me.

The invaluable Adloyada also caught the programme.