Here is the start and finish of the "New York Times" on the BBC situation. The middle section is a recitation of what has happened.
Dispute Over Arms Dossier Wounds the BBC
By WARREN HOGE
LONDON, Aug. 31 - The BBC, the world's largest and best known public service broadcaster, sends out millions of words daily, but its long-nurtured reputation for accuracy, fairness and objectivity is being challenged for just 20 of them.
On May 29, the defense correspondent of its morning radio news show, Andrew Gilligan, said that the government had inserted into its dossier of intelligence on Iraqi arms the claim that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons that were deployable within 45 minutes.
Mr. Gilligan went on to say that "actually the government probably knew that that 45-minute figure was wrong, even before it decided to put it in." The phrase took only seconds to utter, at 6:07 a.m., but the effect has been long lasting.......
........ Mr. Davies acknowledged that the board of governors had not tried to establish "the intrinsic truth" of the original charge before they issued their endorsement of the practices that led to it being broadcast.
Under questioning, Mr. Davies listed several paths for people to follow if they felt a BBC report had dealt with them unfairly, but he said that none of them could rule on accuracy. Lord Hutton's counsel, James Dingemans, replied that he saw no way a person "seriously aggrieved" by a report he considered wrong could get a correction from the BBC.
As a group, the governors faulted Mr. Gilligan's editors for not seeking any comment from 10 Downing Street before broadcasting the charge. One governor, the corporation's vice chairman, Lord Ryder, complained that the BBC was adopting tabloid standards of never corroborating charges. Another, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, suggested bringing in independent monitors of BBC procedures "to answer charges that we never admit we are wrong."
When Mr. Davies argued in his testimony that the BBC was only broadcasting a credible source's charge that the government had falsified information, not making the charge itself, Lord Hutton asked if he really thought listeners were able to make that distinction.
Lord Hutton asked Mr. Davies if the charge had been about a public official taking a bribe, would the BBC have broadcast it without first checking to see if the charge was correct. Mr. Davies replied, "My feeling, My Lord, is in a situation like that you would ask the senior public figure whether it was true."
nytimes.com |
