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BBC got back-slapped
From http://media.guardian.co.uk/huttoni...1133172,00.html
"Lord Hutton today delivered the worst possible verdict for the BBC, describing its editorial systems as "defective" and declaring that the board of governors led by chairman Gavyn Davies had failed in its duty to act as an independent regulator.
The judge lambasted BBC management for allowing the Radio 4 Today reporter Andrew Gilligan to broadcast "unfounded", "grave" and "false allegations of fact impugning the integrity of others".
In a wide-ranging and unequivocal attack on the corporation that also took in the board of governors and BBC journalism, Lord Hutton said editorial systems had failed, leaving the futures of director general Greg Dyke, chairman Gavyn Davies and head of news Richard Sambrook hanging precariously in the balance.
The BBC is making a statement within the hour and there have already been reports that Mr Davies is considering his position.
Hutton report: full coverage
Hutton delivers damning verdict on BBC
Owen Gibson and Ciar Byrne
Wednesday January 28, 2004
Hutton report: worst possible verdict for BBC
Lord Hutton today delivered the worst possible verdict for the BBC, describing its editorial systems as "defective" and declaring that the board of governors led by chairman Gavyn Davies had failed in its duty to act as an independent regulator.
The judge lambasted BBC management for allowing the Radio 4 Today reporter Andrew Gilligan to broadcast "unfounded", "grave" and "false allegations of fact impugning the integrity of others".
In a wide-ranging and unequivocal attack on the corporation that also took in the board of governors and BBC journalism, Lord Hutton said editorial systems had failed, leaving the futures of director general Greg Dyke, chairman Gavyn Davies and head of news Richard Sambrook hanging precariously in the balance.
The BBC is making a statement within the hour and there have already been reports that Mr Davies is considering his position.
Gilligan made 'unfounded' allegations
Lord Hutton criticised Gilligan for making "unfounded" and "grave" allegations that the government probably knew that the 45-minute claim was wrong or that it was not inserted in the first draft of the dossier because it only came from one source.
"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," ruled Lord Hutton."
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and there is plenty more of pie in the face for the BBC in the full story. A virulently anti-American Western newsmedia that got their a** handed to them in the report from an individual who was described by both sides when the inquiry began as a man of strong character, integrity and impartial. Of course I am not surprised at the BBC's sorry behavior in this entire event, they have a way like a lot of British press of taking a story and running wild with it no matter how incredulous it may be. Nice to see that they will be put in their place, whether they want to or not changes are coming from the top on down. They should start by firing that fat, rotund, "investigative" and I use the term lightly, journalist Andrew Gilligan, what a disgrace he represents for running amock with a superficial story at best, pure veneer.
oh no! Occrider what will you do now for a fair and balanced new source??
AHHHH the world is of end!
//runs into a field with a gun... ahhh
soooooo, what news source do you use that is so much more balanced?
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| Originally posted by St_Andrew soooooo, what news source do you use that is so much more balanced? |
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| Originally posted by Yoepus oh no! Occrider what will you do now for a fair and balanced new source?? AHHHH the world is of end! //runs into a field with a gun... ahhh |
BBC is in a meltdown today, as they should be. It's about time they got slammed. The case has now been made that they need an independent regulator - not just internal controls. I hope it happens, because it's becoming increasingly clear that the BBC is not some great big unbiased source of information.
And what your problem with the BBC now?
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| Originally posted by imokruok BBC is in a meltdown today, as they should be. It's about time they got slammed. The case has now been made that they need an independent regulator - not just internal controls. I hope it happens, because it's becoming increasingly clear that the BBC is not some great big unbiased source of information. |
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| Originally posted by occrider I've actually been using cnn international/reuters as of late. I've been pretty lazy as of late and bbc.co.uk prompts you to click on one more button to access the news ... |
My IE opens up to a news page. Washington Post to be exact. Just one less button to push.
The Hutton Report was a disgrace. There is no doubt in my mind that both the British and American governments "sexed" up reports of Iraq's WMD program and I am sure a certain Mr. Kay will agree with me on this. Anyone who still thinks otherwise is naive beyond argument.
I back the BBC fully and I am glad that there is still an independent body that does not bow under political pressure. Sadly, it seems Blair and co. have already started to pollute the BBC to suit their own needs, what with a call for resignations and internal changes.
Biased is a relative term. There is no such thing as pure indifference. The BBC is the only mass media source that comes close to a satisfactory level of indifference. I realized this after living under the umbrella of CNN all my life.
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| Originally posted by razmataz The Hutton Report was a disgrace. There is no doubt in my mind that both the British and American governments "sexed" up reports of Iraq's WMD program and I am sure a certain Mr. Kay will agree with me on this. Anyone who still thinks otherwise is naive beyond argument. |
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| Originally posted by Dervish Hahaha weres your evidence? (this is great just cut and paste the same thing) |
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| Originally posted by razmataz The Hutton Report was a disgrace. There is no doubt in my mind that both the British and American governments "sexed" up reports of Iraq's WMD program and I am sure a certain Mr. Kay will agree with me on this. |
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KAY: As you know and we discussed, I do not have a written statement. This hearing came about very quickly. I do have a few preliminary comments, but I suspect you're more interested in asking questions, and I'll be happy to respond to those questions to the best of my ability. I would like to open by saying that the talent, dedication and bravery of the staff of the [Iraq Survey Group] that was my privilege to direct is unparalleled and the country owes a great debt of gratitude to the men and women who have served over there and continue to serve doing that. A great deal has been accomplished by the team, and I do think ... it important that it goes on and it is allowed to reach its full conclusion. In fact, I really believe it ought to be better resourced and totally focused on WMD; that that is important to do it. But I also believe that it is time to begin the fundamental analysis of how we got here, what led us here and what we need to do in order to ensure that we are equipped with the best possible intelligence as we face these issues in the future. Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here. Sen. [Edward] Kennedy knows very directly. Senator Kennedy and I talked on several occasions prior to the war that my view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction. I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war -- certainly, the French president, [Jacques] Chirac, as I recall in April of last year, referred to Iraq's possession of WMD. The Germans certainly -- the intelligence service believed that there were WMD. It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing. We're also in a period in which we've had intelligence surprises in the proliferation area that go the other way. The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn't discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location. The Libyan program recently discovered was far more extensive than was assessed prior to that. There's a long record here of being wrong. There's a good reason for it. There are probably multiple reasons. Certainly proliferation is a hard thing to track, particularly in countries that deny easy and free access and don't have free and open societies. In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441. Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities -- one last chance to come clean about what it had. We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material. I think the aim -- and certainly the aim of what I've tried to do since leaving -- is not political and certainly not a witch hunt at individuals. It's to try to direct our attention at what I believe is a fundamental fault analysis that we must now examine. And let me take one of the explanations most commonly given: Analysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration. I deeply think that is a wrong explanation. As leader of the effort of the Iraqi Survey Group, I spent most of my days not out in the field leading inspections. It's typically what you do at that level. I was trying to motivate, direct, find strategies. In the course of doing that, I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance. And never -- not in a single case -- was the explanation, "I was pressured to do this." The explanation was very often, "The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there's another explanation for it." And each case was different, but the conversations were sufficiently in depth and our relationship was sufficiently frank that I'm convinced that, at least to the analysts I dealt with, I did not come across a single one that felt it had been, in the military term, "inappropriate command influence" that led them to take that position. It was not that. It was the honest difficulty based on the intelligence that had -- the information that had been collected that led the analysts to that conclusion. And you know, almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that. We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that. The fact that it wasn't tells me that we've got a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong, and we've got to figure out what was there. And that's what I call fundamental fault analysis. http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLI...ript/index.html |
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my evidence is the lack of it... a year after the invasion there are no weapons... a year after the invasion Mr. Kay has resigned... my evidence is his testimony... my evidence is the late Dr. Kelly.. my evidence would just be a replication of what has already been said...what you choose to ignore. my evidence is not MY evidence...its the truth. |
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| Originally posted by occrider Unfortunately that's an argument from ignorance (no I'm not calling you ignorant, that's the name of the logical fallacy). The lack of proof is not a case for proof. The fact that no wmds have been found is not a conclusive "smoking gun" so to speak that Bush or Blair manipulated intelligence to deceive us from teh actual truth. For now , it only indicates that we suffered from bad intelligence, and poor judgement on acting on that intelligence. The very case you are making is very similar to the case Bush/Blair made. "Of course there are WMDs in Iraq ... show us the proof that there are none." |
occrider, thanks for posting Kay's comments. They certainly aren't what Uncle Ted was looking for yesterday.
As for the BBC, the hits just keep on coming! Their director general Greg Dyke just resigned today. (Major resignation #2...)
And for those of you who may doubt the findings of the Hutton report, it has become (or should have become) quite clear to those following the investigation that the BBC's credibility could be called to question as it become evident that they improperly overstepped its bounds during the course of the inquiry:
August 13 2003
August 21 2003
August 28 2003
September 1 2003
September 2 2003
September 8 2003
September 18 2003
Of course ... perhaps I am simply being naieve beyond argument.
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| Originally posted by occrider Unfortunately that's an argument from ignorance (no I'm not calling you ignorant, that's the name of the logical fallacy). The lack of proof is not a case for proof. The fact that no wmds have been found is not a conclusive "smoking gun" so to speak that Bush or Blair manipulated intelligence to deceive us from teh actual truth. For now , it only indicates that we suffered from bad intelligence, and poor judgement on acting on that intelligence. The very case you are making is very similar to the case Bush/Blair made. "Of course there are WMDs in Iraq ... show us the proof that there are none." |
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| Originally posted by razmataz The Hutton Report was a disgrace. There is no doubt in my mind that both the British and American governments "sexed" up reports of Iraq's WMD program and I am sure a certain Mr. Kay will agree with me on this. Anyone who still thinks otherwise is naive beyond argument. |
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| Originally posted by eLe_vatE The intelligence may turn out to be unreliable or completely wrong, but that would be no fault of the UK government at least (don't know about the US yet), they merely presented the evidence directly from the intelligence that was made available to them from the intelligence services, the findings from the Hutton report show this. |
As far as incorrect intelligence goes, I find it hard to fathom that the American and British intelligence (2 governments that have some of the world's renowned intelligence agencies) got the plot completely wrong. Not to mention coupled with the volumes upon volumes of information that Iraq provided before the invasion, and the information collected by U.N. Inspectors.
It is just too easy to say "oh im sorry, we had bad intelligence". Maybe the BBC did cross the line in codes of conduct (not that i think they did) but I think what should be more worrying is the fact that American and British intelligence could be so "wrong" about a whole war.
Well, there was a panel of smart guys to figure out the best excuse for the war. Problem is and will be bringing the country into international standards of behavior. Lol!!!
[[[smoke]]]
ITV reporting in the last few hours ...
1. Andrew Gilligan has resigned
2. An opinion poll carried out by ITV (who you would think would have every reason to kick the beeb while they're down 
) reports that
10% of the British public think the Hutton report was fair and unbiased
90% think it was a whitewash!!
The British public are not as stupid as Blair thinks they are 
If he thinks this Hutton report is going to get him off the hook for leading us to war on what everyone could see were false pretenses, he better think again 
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| Originally posted by smokeape Well, there was a panel of smart guys to figure out the best excuse for the war. Problem is and will be bringing the country into international standards of behavior. Lol!!! [[[smoke]]] |
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| Originally posted by razmataz As far as incorrect intelligence goes, I find it hard to fathom that the American and British intelligence (2 governments that have some of the world's renowned intelligence agencies) got the plot completely wrong. Not to mention coupled with the volumes upon volumes of information that Iraq provided before the invasion, and the information collected by U.N. Inspectors. It is just too easy to say "oh im sorry, we had bad intelligence". Maybe the BBC did cross the line in codes of conduct (not that i think they did) but I think what should be more worrying is the fact that American and British intelligence could be so "wrong" about a whole war. |
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| Originally posted by occrider And why is that so hard to fathom? The CIA and western intelligence services have a historical record of underestimating the nuclear capabilities and weapons of mass destruction development programs of many countries for much of the latter part of the 20th century. The Soviet testing of the atomic bomb in 1949, the Chinese nuclear development program in 1964, most notably the Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons program which COMPLETELY caught western intellligence experts off guard in the 90's, the development of nuclear fuel rods by N. Korea right under our very noses during Clinton's term, and the extent of the Libyan and Iranian wmd programs due to pakistani assistance as gleaned by information provided by Quadafi. All of these were critical intelligence failures that the CIA should have known about yet didn't. And why did these developments catch the west off guard? They were covert programs that did not draw much attention. Iraq was the exact opposite ... Huessein made no pretenses of disguising his ambition for these programs, it drew the attention of all intelligence analysts, and it drew the most speculation not of what was discovered or found during inspections but what hadn't been found. Specifically, the speculation stemmed from wmds we knew he had prior to the first gulf war and what was unaccounted for by inspections following the first war. Furthermore, the weapons dossier they sent to the UN was by no means an accurate account of their wmd programs and contained so many holes that it was regarded by most nations as a complete joke. There was no evidence gleaned by Russian, French, or German intelligence services to indicate definitively that there were no wmds and their respective governments all thought that Iraq possessed them. So the intelligence was faulty and inaccurate, that fact cannot be denied. The Americans had it wrong, the brits had it wrong, the Germans, Russians, French, etc., everyone had it wrong. That shouldn't be the issue that is in dispute. What should be called into question are the US and Britain's brash decision to go to war on intelligence that may or may not have been entirely accurate or properly accounted for. More time should have been spent on verifying the veracity of all these accounts. |
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