HUTTON REPORT THREATENS JOURNALISM

PALAST AND OTHERS SPEAK OUT

JOIN MEDIA FOR DEMOCRACY 2004

Journalism is under attack was the conclusion. On stage last night at the 92nd Street Y here in Gotham, veteran New Yorker media writer Ken Auletta spoke with his former boss, editor Tina Brown. His topic was the state of the media and what he learned in a decade of in-depth media reporting, now collected in his new book “Back Story.”

If anyone could give a “State of the Media” address it is Ken. His probing reports have catalogued the changes in the media world over the last decade.

MARKET BIAS

“It’s not about political bias or conservative bias or liberal bias,” said Auletta, who has spent hours huddled with the likes of Rupert Murdoch, John Malone and any media mogul you can name. It’s about market bias. “The left is wrong about Fox and Fox is wrong about the New York Times — it’s not politics, but it goes deeper.”

Tina (whom I’m helping with her new CNBC show “Topic A”) agreed.

It all goes deeper. Looking as I do at media/political coverage and calculations everyday, it seems clear that the first news out on almost any story, especially “breaking news,” is deeply flawed. More importantly, the forces and interests that shape much of the news agenda often go uncovered. This is as true in current affairs as it is in coverage of media affairs.

ENTER LORD HUTTON

The explosive events in England came up for comment last night with the publication of the Hutton Report. The report is the verdict of Lord Hutton, a British judge, on the death (by suicide, it is said) of weapons scientist David Kelly and the roles played by the British government and the BBC in his death.

After going through the motions of a full and fair inquiry, Lord Hutton exonerated the Blair government. The government had leaked Dr. Kelly’s name, had lied to the public with its “dodgy dossier” that justified its role in the war on Iraq and had blasted the BBC for its coverage. When Lord Hutton was first named, many media outlets saw him as “fair and balanced” in the real sense. Today the reports are that the people who know him best are not surprised that he would close ranks behind the establishment.

BLASTING THE PRESS

Ken Auletta was struck by Tony Blair’s speech in Parliament AFTER the report’s release. The report left him glowing, and the Prime Minister took the occasion to lash out at the British press itself for its irresponsibility, etc. His former media advisor (i.e., “spinmeister”) Alastair Campbell went on the offensive by demanding more “reforms” at the BBC. A week ago Campbell had made a similar case in a publication of the World Economic Forum in which he argued that governments are being undermined by all-too-aggressive media coverage.

Tina Brown suggested that Tony’s wife Cherie is practically “around the bend” because of all the attacks and probing. She also suggested that media sensationalism (and investigative reporting) was really what’s bugging the Blairites.

And yet if the Blairs are so anti-sensationalism, what explains the continuing alliance between Blair and Rupert Murdoch? Murdoch’s SUN newspaper has been backing Blair while his TV outlet Sky News competes with the BBC. Somehow the SUN managed to be the only British newspaper to get its grimy hands on the Hutton report before it was released and so outscooped its competitors. Weird isn’t it? A controversy about leaks ends up producing one of the biggest!

WHATS REALLY GOING ON

What’s really going on, as I have been arguing ever since my last visit to London, is a behind-the-scenes campaign to curb the independence and power of the BBC in order to break it up or eventually privatize it. The campaign by self-interested private broadcasters is led by Murdoch and supported by the likes of Viacom in the US. Privatization of public institutions has been at the heart of the Blair political agenda.

This affair cannot be seen in isolation from events that most media outlets ignore: demands for more outside regulation of the BBC — all in the name, of course, of “reform” — and threats to put the BBC under a new parliamentarily appointed Commission that has been meeting with the BBC to come up with a new, more market-friendly regulatory approach in the UK. (Translation from the Queen’s English: Give the store away by opening the British media market to more privatization and Americanization.) In other words, it’s about the public interest versus the private interest.

BURYING THE LEAD

But this is not how the press is presenting the story, though if you look a little more closely, you will find reference to what I am suggesting. Here is paragraph NINE in the Reuters dispatch:

Hutton’s findings will strengthen BBC critics who say the broadcaster should fall under the oversight of the government’s media regulator. Conservative leader Michael Howard said the case for outside regulation of the BBC “has never been stronger.”

The Hutton Report takes ONE BBC journalist, Andrew Gilligan, to task for ONE report that included TWO disputed words. Gilligan’s report attributed to David Kelly an opinion that the government had “sexed up” its claims about Iraq’s presumed ability to unleash WMDs in 45 minutes. The Hutton Report does not examine BBC journalism or BBC practices, but it is being read — deliberately — as an informed verdict on both.

Gilligan may or may not have been right — Kelly is no longer around to say — but his error of opinionizing — even false opinionizing — is hardly one that we do not see every day on every US TV network. Bear in mind that this happened on ONE broadcast at 6 in the morning. No one has questioned 19 other reports by this same award-winning reporter. If one fact was wrong, does this invalidate his central finding — that the Blair government was overselling the war on specious grounds?

BBC CHAIRMAN RESIGNS

The BBC board chairman Gavyn Davies resigned immediately but questioned the motives and basis of Hutton’s findings. His resignation made the headlines; his concerns did not. His reason?

There is an honorable tradition in British public life that those charged with authority at the top of an organization should accept responsibility for what’s happened in that organization.

Greg Dyke, director general of the public broadcaster, conceded, “The BBC does accept that certain key allegations reported by Andrew Gilligan on the Today program on May 29 last year were wrong and we apologize for them.”

A CORRECTION OR A CRIME?

This is a correction, not a high crime, but it is not being treated as a correction for one very serious reason: the Blair government is using the report to deflect attention from the overall veracity of its claims on Iraq. The small mistake is being used to cover up the BIG lie.

DISGUSTED

The first reaction that I’ve received to the Hutton report came from Pia Raug, a media-savvy observer in Denmark, who was watching with disbelief.

BBC gets all the heat and all the blame. Apart from tid-bit blaming on Kelly himself and the MOD for not telling Kelly, that they had decided to confirm his name to the press - should the press on its own accord come up with his name and ask about it.

But can you tell me HOW Hutton’s judgement can be of so weak consequence, that it demands from the BBC board and editors they should have lived up to their editorial duties and have checked Gilligan’s manuscript thoroughly AND stopped it because it made false accusations thereby being the sole culprit for the whole process ending up with Kelly’s (sad and unfortunate as it is - him being a single dead human being) alleged (my term) suicide????…

The world is crazy - and if the “fourth power” does not go into revolution mode right now - this might very well be the death-blow for any possible notion of a “free press” and the obligation put on the media to defend the freedom of speech.

I am disgusted. Bad joke, isn’t it, that in Danish “MOD” (guess it’s short for “Ministry of Defense”) means “Courage.”

WHITEWASH

Now on to some other reactions. Jonathan Freedland writing in the Guardian, which has tons of reports on line as do all the British papers, calls it a “whitewash”:

As theatre, the show may have lacked visual splendour: just a modern, Ikea-blond wood courtroom with a white-haired judge at its apex, hunched over his text, reading aloud in his gentle Ulster brogue. But what it lacked in set design and costume it more than made up in narrative drive. The Hutton report had no confusing ambiguities or detours. It all thrust in the same, clear direction: the government was right and the BBC was wrong.

PALAST SENDS OUT AN SOS

Journalist Greg Palast, whose investigative work can’t get on the air in America but has appeared on the BBC, is pissed and says Americans should take note:

This is not just a story about what is happening “over there” in the United Kingdom. This we must remember: David Kelly was not only advisor to the British but to the UN and, by extension, the expert for George W. Bush. Our commander-in-chief leaped to adopt the Boogey Man WMD stories from the Blair government when our own CIA was reticent.

So M’Lord Hutton has killed the messenger: the BBC. Should the reporter Gilligan have used more cautious terms? Some criticism is fair. But the extraordinary import of his and Watts’ story is forgotten: our two governments bent the information then hunted down the questioners.

And now the second invasion of the Iraq war proceeds: the conquest of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Until now, this quasi-governmental outlet has refused to play Izvestia to any prime minister, Labour or Tory.

“The bleak future for British journalism” portends darkness for journalists everywhere - the threat to the last great open platform for hard investigative reporting. And frankly, it’s a worrisome day for me. I’m not a disinterested by-stander. My most important investigations, all but banned from US airwaves, were developed and broadcast by BBC Newsnight, reporter Watts’ program.

BOLLOCKS

David Traynier writes about media from Colchester England:

Over here in blighty, we’re all (those of us that care), digesting the fall-out from Hutton. Personally, after following the case for its duration and reading much of the evidence, I’m clear in my own “verdict” on Hutton’s report – you don’t use the word “bollocks” in the States, do you?

Anyway, it seems to me that Gilligan and the normally fairly docile BBC broke the cardinal rule. Alleging governmental incompetence is fine; arguing with the implementation of policy is OK too. What Gilligan did was suggest that the Government was dishonest in its efforts to convince us of its policy and, by extension, questioned the motives for that policy. The former editor of the BBC’s flagship Newsnight programme, Peter Horrocks, put it well in a memo to his staff in 1997: “Our job should not be to quarrel with the purpose of policy, but to question its implementation.” (Cited by Robert Newman in the Guardian, August 7, 2000).

Gilligan broke the rules and now he and the BBC have been trodden on in one of the most ridiculously one-sided reports I’ve ever seen. OK, Gilligan made a foolish mistake and the BBC should have had tighter procedures in place, but Hutton simply disregarded anything that didn’t favor the Government. I can’t take it seriously and, if an overnight NOP poll for the London Evening Standard is to be believed, neither does much of the public.

THE PUBLIC RESPONSE

“Do you agree that Lord Hutton’s verdict was convincing?”
Yes 36% No 50%

“Was it fair for the BBC to receive most of the blame?”
Fair 49% Unfair 56%

“Was the Hutton Report a Whitewash?”
Yes 49% No 40%

SHEER ONE-SIDENESS

Much of the journalistic coverage, too, seems shocked at the sheer one-sidedness of it all. Yes, they’re journalists within the corporate system and not much can be expected from them, but even amongst all that institutional hardware, there is the software of journalist solidarity. This was even noticeable on rival channels, like Sky News (or “Fox Junior”). I witnessed an interesting exchange between Sky’s political editor, Adam Boulton, and one of their bimbette anchors.

Boulton’s a seasoned journalist, and at one point he was reduced to virtually arguing the BBC’s defence with the aforementioned hairdo. The star of the show was the former editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme – Rod Liddle – who virtually snarled his way through a discussion with Sky’s Michael Brunson. Liddle basically said that he didn’t care what Hutton had said because, having seen the evidence, he could not believe the law lord had come to such a patently nonsensical conclusion. I cheered.

RADIO 4: “WEIRD”

Incidentally, the BBC’s coverage descended to the positively weird at one point on Radio 4’s ‘The World at One’. Here’s a partial transcript I made of an exchange between the presenter, Nick Clarke and Lord Gilbert, a former defence minister and friend of Geoff Hoon.

World at One, BBC Radio 4, 28th January 2004 (1-2 pm)

Lord Gilbert: I think that if Gavyn Davies has a shred of honour in him, he’ll resign before the day is out. I think the Board of Governors has to consider their position. And, as for Mr. Sambrook, I hope he won’t be allowed to resign, I hope he’s dismissed for some of the things he’s done, which I don’t think, er, Lord Hutton really focused on; namely his relations with one of his fellow employees, Miss Susan Watts, which got to the stage that she-

Nick Clarke [interrupts]: I don’t know what you’re talking about, I sincerely hope you know what I’m, what you’re talking about. Let’s-

Lord Gilbert [interrupts]: Didn’t you know that-

Nick Clarke[interrupts]: Shall we just leave that there? I think that would be very sensible.

Lord Gilbert: Well, I do know what-

Nick Clarke [interrupts]: No, I’d much rather not do that. Let’s just talk about Geoff Hoon, which is what I asked you to talk about.

Interview continues normally.

I have no idea what he was talking about.

NEWS NIGHT USES THE F WORD

Later that evening, while watching Newsnight I even felt sympathy for the supposed “rottweiler” Jeremy Paxman, who had to take on an incredibly smug Alastair Campbell. Paxman even quoted Campell’s use of the word “fuck” (releasing Kelly’s name would “fuck” Gilligan), which he clearly enjoyed.

Still, the sense of shell-shock at the BBC (and to a lesser extent the rest of the journalistic establishment) was palpable, broadcast live to the nation as it was for most of the day. It was that, I think, that gave the game away (and was confirmed in its mirror by the clear surprised joy of the Neo Laborites). These are seasoned journalists and they knew what to reasonably expect. What they got was utterly unreasonable. In a word, whitewash.

BBC HAS DETERIORATED

David Ben-Aryeah of BlackNET Global Intell (whatever that is) takes the anti-BBC view:

…Given that the BBC’s charter is up for renewal in 2006, the case could not have come at a worse time - the overall perception of the case is now that the BBC broadcast unverified allegations and thereafter, even more seriously totally failed to investigate formal complaints about the reporter and his conduct….

As one who was raised to respect and even revere the BBC, and who has viewed, over recent years a real deterioration in certain areas of it’s reporting, particularly in standards of reporting - I confess that I am now extremely apprehensive about where the mighty corporation will go now. There seems a high probability that more, possibly many more resignations will follow.

It also seems highly likely that the traditional independence of the BBC wherein the Corporation is self-regulating and self-policing will now have the very real threat of an independent oversight body being imposed.

…Many watchers have felt for a long time that the each new cadre of managers have fallen prey to political correctness and an over-enthusiasm to take pot shots at the government - in the case of the Hutton affair pot shots that have ricocheted into the corporation’s foot — and head!

BBC vs CNN ON THE MIDDLE EAST

The BBC and CNN coverage this morning of the bus bombing and prisoner exchange in Israel underscored the reasons we need a strong BBC. CNN went live with the incident, then to Beirut about the exchange. On CNN Hezbollah was described as “terrorist”; on BBC it was not. On CNN there was no mention of the German diplomacy that produced the breakthrough. BBC interviewed two people — an Israeli spokesman, who claimed that the exchange showed what Israel would do for peace, and an Arab analyst, who offered a totally different context. Neither broadcaster discussed the total collapse of the US-brokered “road map” that has been the fiction of US policy over the years.

And the background, largely unreported in the US? Why new bus attacks? Here’s part of a report from Gideon Levy, an Israeli writing about developments in Nablus:

An hour’s drive from Tel Aviv, a great Palestinian city is dying, and another of the occupation’s goals is being realized. It’s not only that the splendid ancient homes have been laid waste, not only that such a large number of the city’s residents, many of them innocent, have been killed; the entire society is flickering and will soon be extinguished. A similar fate has visited Jenin, Qalqilyah, Tul Karm and Bethlehem, but in Nablus the impact of the death throes is more powerful because of the city’s importance as a district capital and because of its beauty. A cloud of dust and sand envelops the city, which gives the impression of being a combat zone during a cease- fire; its roads are scarred, its electricity poles and telephone booths are shattered, government buildings have been reduced to heaps of rubble. But the true wound lies far deeper than the physical destruction: an economic, cultural and social fabric that is disintegrating and a generation that has known only a life of emptiness and despair. More than any other place in the territories, a state of anarchy is palpably close here.

There is no city as blocked and sealed as Nablus. For the past three and a half years it has been impossible to maintain even a semblance of ordinary day-to-day life here….

YOUR LETTERS

Ed Devitt from Mesquite, Texas, has some new thoughts for us:

With the SuperBowl around the corner, for some reason I’m thinking about gambling. How many billions of dollars are bet on the Superbowl? If those that wager and follow politics took one tenth of their winnings and donated them to a presidential candidate, think of the swelling coffers. You say that you don’t gamble? EVERYONE gambles! When you make the decision to put your feet on the floor in the morning, you’re gambling that you are going to face the day and win.

In order to help our winning our daily bet we have mastered certain techniques to lower the odds in our favor. Little actions like not walking in front of a bus, avoiding holes in the ground even though there isn’t any caution tape around them, not walking across the street when the light turns green, etc. When we go to the voting booths and select a candidate we are betting that our man/woman of choice will actually improve the way things are. I have not yet supported a candidate for the November election and here’s why: I cannot take a gamble on anyone that GAVE this administration the okay to go to war, never mind what is being said now, why weren’t they saying anything THEN, tax cuts for the wealthy (Karl Marx must be pissing himself in his grave because of laughter) if anyone who voted for the ‘gifts’ to the rich benefited or if ANY members of their direct family did, then you’re equally as guilty as those that forced it down the American people’s throat.

Those are the first two weathervanes that I’ll be utilizing when November comes around and if you do not, you’re gambling with OUR lives. One final thorn in my side, if the junior Senator from Massachusetts does get elected that will make the LAST FOUR PRESIDENTS that will have come from Yale College….what are the odds on THAT!?!?!

JUST UP: JOIN MEDIA FOR DEMOCRACY 2004

Finally, may I call your attention to and invite your participation in a new MediaChannel initiative. You can link from page one or go to www.mediafordemocracy.us/mfd/homepage.html

MediaChannel.org Launches Media for Democracy 2004

The international media watchdog has launched a grassroots citizens initiative to prevent the types of media mistakes — such as early, erroneous and politically biased projections — that plagued the 2000 U.S. elections.

And let me hear from you: dissector@mediachannel.org.