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To: maceng2 who wrote (556)	1/28/2004 1:41:43 PM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1417

ITV is having a field day giving a balanced view of the days events.. A newspapers view.. media.guardian.co.uk Labour man who paid for independence Accused of being a government crony when appointed BBC chairman, Gavyn Davies fell on his sword trying to save the corporation's freedom Owen Gibson and Chris Tryhorn Wednesday January 28, 2004 Gavyn Davies' reign as chairman of the BBC ends as it began - in a storm of controversy. The appointment of the former economist to the position in October 2001 was criticised as another example of New Labour cronyism. The irony that he has opted to carry the can for Lord Hutton's damning indictment of the corporation's "defective" journalism following its cataclysmic row with the government will not be lost on anyone at Broadcasting House. Mr Davies has also been accused of being too close to the director general, Greg Dyke, with whom he shares a passion for football - he is a shareholder in Southampton FC while the director general is a former Manchester United director. And both were former Labour donors, a fact that many believe led them to be tougher on the government than they otherwise might have been, in order to prove their independence. The Labour links don't end there - Davies' wife, Sue Nye, is the political secretary of the chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, and he is known to be close to senior figures in the government such as Mr Brown and Peter Mandelson. His links with Labour stretch back to the 1970s, when he joined the Downing Street policy unit under Harold Wilson's government. As chairman of the BBC he was paid £99,000 a year for a four day a week job, a tiny salary compared with his estimated personal wealth of £135m. Before taking on the chairmanship, Mr Davies was the chief international economist at the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, and made much of his fortune from his stake in the bank when it floated in 1999. Born in Zimbabwe to working-class parents, Mr Davies had worked for a number of finance houses before joining Goldman Sachs in 1986. He was expected to have led the BBC's campaign to secure the future of the licence fee as part of the renewal of its royal charter in 2006. At the time of his appointment, he was regarded by many at the corporation as the safest possible pair of hands to steer the BBC through a gathering storm. Before becoming chairman, Mr Davies had been deputy chairman of the BBC's board of governors since the start of 2001, and in 1999 had chaired the review panel that examined how the BBC should fund its expansion into digital television. One of his first jobs was to distance himself from the conclusions of that review. He is described by many as a pragmatist. He doesn't smoke, rarely drinks and is regarded as a serious person. As chairman he has robustly defended the independence of the BBC throughout the corporation's furious row with the government over Today reporter Andrew Gilligan's broadcast claiming the government "sexed up" its dossier on Iraq arms. Mr Davies was once forced to backtrack after he said critics who accused the BBC of dumbing down were "southern, white, middle class, middle-aged and well educated". "I greatly regret giving the impression that I was either taking our heartland for granted, which I was not, or that I was in favour of dumbing down the BBC, which is exactly the reverse of what I believe," he said. "The governors should have realised more fully than they did that their duty to protect the independence of the BBC was not incompatible with giving proper consideration to whether there was validity to the government's complaints," said Lord Hutton. Minutes of the governors' meeting released on July 6 showed that the governors and Mr Davies had their own concerns about Gilligan's broadcast. However, they believed that the principle of defending the BBC's journalism was more important than expressing their concern over the reporting of the story. "If you say it tonight, you are disowning Andrew Gilligan," Mr Davies warned his fellow governors at the fateful meeting when they chose to back Gilligan and come out fighting against the government in general and Alastair Campbell in particular. At a similar meeting tomorrow, his resignation is likely to be ratified in the hope that it will save the board of governors as an institution and head off calls for the BBC to come under independent regulation.