[A-List] UK state: whitewash backwash

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Dyke lawyers consider Hutton appeal

Owen Gibson
Monday February 2, 2004

Former BBC director general Greg Dyke, who resigned last week following the
publication of the Hutton report, will this week hire lawyers to investigate
the possibility of launching an appeal against the judge's findings.

Mr Dyke, who is still fuming after the corporation's board of governors
effectively forced him out in the wake of Lord Hutton's damning criticism,
is speaking to lawyers to see whether he has grounds for appeal.

Lord Hutton's verdict was not legally binding and so not open to the
traditional recourse of appeal. But if lawyers believe the judge wrongly
interpreted the law over what journalists can safely report when they have
information from a reliable source that hasn't been verified, they could
push for a judicial review of his verdict.

Some human rights lawyers fear that, while Lord Hutton's verdict was the
result of a public inquiry and not a court case so sets no precedent, it
will play on the minds of newspaper editors and broadcasters and dissuade
them from publishing allegations from credible sources that they can't
conclusively prove to be true.

A key justification for Lord Hutton's damning verdict on the BBC's
journalism and management was a 2001 appeal case in which the House of Lords
ruled that "there is no duty to publish what is not true: there is no
interest in being misinformed".

In a key passage in his report, Lord Hutton said news outlets should have an
editing system in place to consider the wording of reports, and whether they
should be published at all, in cases where the reports contained
"information impugning the integrity of others".

He quoted from the case of Albert Reynolds, former Taoiseach of Ireland, who
sued Times Newspapers in 1999 for the contents of an article it published
about him sub-headed "Why a fib too far proved fatal for the political
career of Ireland's peacemaker and Mr. Fixit".

Lord Hutton appeared to interpret the ruling as meaning that no broadcaster
or newspaper should report a reliable source making damaging allegations
against the establishment without first making sure they were true.

Some lawyers have already said Lord Hutton appeared to have misinterpreted
the law on this crucial point and that newspapers and broadcasters remained
free to report allegations that were not true as long as the journalism was
responsible and in the public interest.

They also pointed out that only three of the five law lords who decided that
case in 1999 - Lords Nicholls, Cooke and Hobhouse - were quoted in the
report.

Mr Dyke and the BBC lawyers who were planning a robust defence against Lord
Hutton's findings before they realised the full impact of his verdict last
Wednesday, believe the judge could be challenged on his interpretation of
the case.

"We have an opinion... there are points of law in there where he is quite
clearly wrong. We were shocked that it was so black and white. We knew
mistakes had been made by us but we didn't believe they were only by us,"
said Mr Dyke in an interview last Friday.