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Date Posted: 03:47:13 01/31/04 Sat
Author: Dominique Searle
Subject: Blair and the BBC - has spin been given a new life?

I wondered how people around the Commonwealth were responding to the BBC crisis.

I found it rather depressing. Here is a piece I wrote for today's Gibraltar Chronicle.

best
Dominique

HAS SPIN BEEN GIVEN A NEW LIFE?

Does the Hutton inquiry mean anything to us? Should we be concerned about the way things have unfolded at the BBC?

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw Tony Blair grin and heard Alistair Campbell gloat was a vision of Salome receiving Greg Dyke's head.

Dyke has described Campbell 's reactions as "ungracious." In reality they amount to the spinning top that was wobbling and insecure suddenly feeling momentum gather again. Has spin been given a new life? It may well be so, though Blair has little to grin about in a week where he scrapped though the university fees bill thanks to giveaway votes from the Scots (no doubt acquired by Gordon Brown's last minute blessing) and when 'cleared' in a report which found that he had not sexed up information about weapons of mass destruction. In the event the information that justified going to war was apparently not true in the first place.

The question as to whether the decision to go to the war was right is a separate one. But the debate about media and credibility of the BBC is crucial.

In some respects the weeks events were beginning to look something like the aftermath of the 'Death on the Rock' documentary and subsequent inquiry which Thatcher used to squeeze away Thames TV and the investigative journalism it fostered.

There are similarities. Death on the Rock was an imperfect report. The journalists then, and Gilligan now, might be guilty of putting speed before accuracy, sacrificing elements of editorial scrutiny in order to meet an early deadline and break the story. In that there is also an element of the journalist ego giving itself priority over the protection (which means more than just not naming) of the source.

It's not easy - people sometimes make a statement and then -be it true or false - repent and seek to retract. Sad and unnecessary as it was, Dr Kelly's suicide is more to do with his personality and individual make up than anything else. This was not a layman walking in the street and seeing something as dramatic as the SAS shoot out was. This was an expert who rightly or wrongly felt he should make public informed views about the quality of evidence that the people were being presented with. He miscalculated his impact and his ability to control or cope with the torrent that was unleashed.

Journalists do not and cannot always see the full breadth of the impact and implications of the reports they make. The immediacy of radio adds to that difficulty.

But just as in the Death on the Rock case - the reality is that the general direction of what was revealed and the issues that it gave the public an opportunity to debate, were not without merit. Would these issues have been exposed or aired otherwise?

The SAS shooting, even accepting the verdict of the inquest, was brutal and never fully explained.

The existence weapons of mass destruction and the ability for their rapid deployment is now painted so differently that one must at least question the quality of 'expertise' that created the confidence of the initial report used to reveal it.

But in all this, as No10 dances with the heads of the BBC chiefs, it must be a concern, throughout the Commonwealth in particular, that the Corporation runs the risk of being Campbellised, that reporters may lose the feeling of support in the difficult task of straight reporting.

Auntie has long held a torch for British democractic principles around the world because of its solid reputation for independence and an interest in real issues and real news.

With much of the British mainstream press already either partisan or obsessed with trivia, Mr Blair should think hard about the legacy he may leave Britain , and the standing internationally of the UK as a role model, if he sees Hutton as an invitation to return to a politics in which Mandelson and Campbell make up his troika.

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