Gilligan slams BBC bosses and UK government

Journalist Andrew Gilligan launched an wide-ranging attack on the BBC governors today over their handling of the Dr David Kelly affair.

The former reporter for Radio 4’s Today programme said the Governors’ weakness in the face of pressure from the British government had “turned a crisis into a disaster”.

BBC news journalism in general, and the Today programme in particular, have suffered as a result of their capitulation to the British government and Alistair Campbell, he said.

Since quitting his job in the wake of the Hutton Report, Gilligan has reserved most of his criticism for the UK government, but this time the Governors were his target.

In a lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival, Gilligan admitted he had made mistakes in his Today programme report on the “sexed up” Iraq dossier.

“Now of course I don’t deny my part in the crisis. But a far greater part was played by the lethal combination of Lord Hutton’s utterly unbalanced judgment, and the over-reaction of the BBC governors,” he said.

“To put it bluntly, the governors panicked. By sacking Greg Dyke, it was they who turned a crisis into a disaster. But unlike the rest of us, who’ve been held to account for our failings, the governors are still here.”

Gilligan went on: “The official policy of the BBC is, and remains, that the governors can do no wrong. I think we’ve seen a slightly worrying attempt since Hutton for the BBC to try to rationalise what the governors did, find reasons to justify the error they made.”

Even senior BBC executives would like to see different governors brought in, he claimed.

The new BBC complaints system, brought in as a result of Hutton’s findings, is a worrying development, Gilligan said.

“To make your new guiding principle a presumption that the complainant is right, as the BBC intends to, is pretty dangerous,” he said. “It’s a gold-embroidered welcome mat for any (British) government or corporate bully.

“And it’ll lead to blander, more fearful, more self-censoring journalism at the BBC. What BBC journalist will want to risk laying themselves open to a process in which they are presumed to be wrong?”

Of the Today programme, he said: “I can’t say I’ve noticed any diminution in the robustness of the interviewing at Today, but the programme does seem to have lost at least half of its reporters and there seems to be a trend of moving story-breaking journalism off daily news programmes and into less watched or heard programmes in current affairs. This strikes me as a pity.”

The BBC has produced some good investigative reporting since the Hutton Report, including documentaries on racist police trainees, standards in children’s nurseries and the work of the BNP, he said.

But he added: “I cannot help thinking that teenage police recruits, 22-year-old nursery nurses and a convicted racist thug make softer targets than ministers and company bosses.”

Gilligan also used his speech to attack the British government over the Iraq dossier, accusing them of “45-carat, ocean-going, industrial-strength shamelessness”.

And he also attacked Lord Hutton, describing his report as “a landmark of judicial incompetence and bias.”