[A-List] UK state: Hutton aftermath

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

The idea that Birt could be appointed overall media regulator is a very
plausible one, and one which would appeal to Birt and any sitting prime
minister, who would be guaranteed service of the utmost loyalty and
discretion, as Birt dispensed at the BBC under both Thatcher and Blair.
Meanwhile, it was Robin Butler's predecessor, Robert Armstrong, who was
famously "economical with the truth" during the Spycatcher fiasco of 1987.

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How Dare John Birt Dictate To The Press?

Iain Macwhirter on why the media must stand firm to tell the whole truth
about wmd
The Sunday Herald, 8 February 2004

Sieg Heil! "Journalistic fascism" is on the march, according to The Guardian
journalist Martin Kettle. Coverage of the Hutton report, he said last week,
revealed a media sullied by "scorn, prejudice and petulance . in which all
elected politicians are contemptible and judges are disreputable".

Does he mean us? He surely does. Mr Kettle believes that we hacks are
conspiring to create in Britain a Weimar climate of public opinion - one
ripe for a charismatic politics of the far right.

Well, he has a point about the culture of cynicism, I suppose. However,
Kettle's epistle lapses into such superlative indignation that it reads like
the very punk journalism he claims to despise. But he's not alone in
indignation. In the wake of Hutton, a succession of media panjandrums have
been tearing their clothes and lamenting the decline of British journalism.

Lord Birt of Dalek had a go last week at the BBC he used to lead, ripping
into the culture of sloppy journalism and anti-government bias. Odd that
most of the editors he said had "failed to exercise due scrutiny" were
products of his own regime, like Mark Byford, the new acting DG. Some
thought Lord Birt's attack betrayed a whiff of sour grapes at the popularity
of his successor, Greg Dyke among the BBC staff. But that would be cynical.

A clutch of dusty names from the newspaper attic have also been lamenting
the loss of the virtues of accuracy, verification, and straight reporting.
Sir Harold Evans, the celebrated former editor of The Sunday Times, even
called for a Royal Commission on journalistic standards. Perhaps Birt could
be put in charge of it. He would no doubt recommend a Byzantine structure of
regulation and editorial controls.

Don't laugh. I suspect Lord Birt, who has been advising Downing Street on
"blue skies thinking", might be just the kind of chap Number 10 would like
to see regulating British broadcasting. If the BBC governors are scrapped, I
confidently predict that Lord Birt will have a say in what replaces them.
You read it here first.
Of course, no-one regulates the written press, except the toothless Press
Complaints Commission, which is simply ignored by editors. But is it any the
worse for that? Is there anything systemically wrong with British
journalism? Have news stories become infected with opinion? Is the use of
anonymous and single sources undermining the credibility of exclusives? Has
the press abandoned the pursuit of truth and impartiality in favour of
campaigning and spin?

Yes, spin. Normally we associate that word with Alastair Campbell, Charlie
Whelan and Jo Moore, but spin - the conscious manipulation of truth to serve
political ends - originated on Fleet Street. It was the tabloid press, most
notably The Sun, which began the trend towards tendentious reporting and
hype back in the 1980s.
Remember "Gotcha", the infamous front-page headline on the sinking of The
Belgrano, and the famously fictitious interview with the war widow of
Colonel H Jones. Recall the 1987 general election splash: "If Kinnock wins
today will the last person to leave Britain turn out the lights"? The
Freddie-Starr-Ate-My-Hamster school of journalism has a lot to answer for,
which is why it is so richly ironic to see The Sun attacking the BBC for its
ethics.

There's been no shortage of rich irony. Like the spectacle of Labour spin
doctors accusing journalists of bending the truth. Or the civil servant who
once defended economy with the truth being put in charge of the inquiry into
WMD intelligence failings. No, I am not impugning Lord Butler's integrity. I
am just stating the facts. I seem to recall that he also gave the disgraced
former Tory minister, Neil Hamilton, a clean bill of health.

The greatest irony is the Daily Mail's sudden discovery that the BBC - which
it has hitherto attacked as a treacherous bastion of left-wing anti-family
bias - is in fact a pillar of society and one of the greatest institutions
in the history of this island race. I mean. You couldn't make it up.

So, the press is certainly not without faults. Indeed, the faults are so
obvious that hardly anyone believes what they read in the papers anymore,
according to opinion polls. Until recently, the BBC was a beacon of public
trust in a wasteland of incredulity. But one of the tragedies of the
Gilligan farce is that the people no longer believe even the Beeb. A
post-Hutton ICM poll in The Guardian indicated that, while three times as
many people believed the BBC as believed the government, half of those
polled believed neither.

This is a poor state of affairs. If no-one believes politicians and no-one
believes the media, the people are left in a state of cynical ignorance.
Something has to be done by the restoration of editorial standards and by a
more rigorous complaints procedure. It happens in America.

However, this may not be the time to be doing it. One needed only to witness
the extraordinary bitterness between the Labour minister Peter Hain and
former Today editor Rod Liddle on the BBC's Question Time last week to
understand why. There is a war taking place now between politicians and the
media. Just as you can't talk about rebuilding trust when armies are
shooting at each other, neither can you seek to restore faith in the media
and politics while the two sides are hurling weapons of self-destruction at
each other.

Anyway, we should get the problem into perspective. There is always room for
improvement, but the media currently has little to apologise for, at the
quality end at least. Freedom is more important. I firmly believe that, when
the history of the Iraq war is written, it will be regarded as a moment when
the freedom of the press - sometimes even the freedom to get it wrong - was
never more important.

I do not believe that Tony Blair lied over WMD in Iraq. I don't even think
the PM wilfully elided the distinction between battlefield weapons and
medium range WMD. Indeed, I'm satisfied he has been as honest as any PM can
be when going to war. But that makes it even worse. Through all the
multiplying inquiries, and leaks and denials, one thing is clear: Britain
went to war on a false premise. The stockpiles of WMD, which we went to war
to disarm, weren't there. Thousands have died. It doesn't get much worse.
Iraq must now be regarded as the most serious foreign policy disaster since
Suez. It was a catastrophic failure of intelligence and a breach of
representative and responsible government of epic proportions. I believe it
is the beginning of the end for Tony Blair.

The processes by which Britain blundered into this war will be debated for
decades, by historians and politicians. But I am absolutely confident that
the quality press, and most notably the BBC, will be credited with making a
sincere and dedicated attempt to get at the truth of one of the greatest
scandals of our time. If that isn't the press doing its job, I'll eat my NUJ
card.