The BBC’s Royal Charter and Agreement constitutionally established the BBC. It makes sure that the BBC are there to provide a ‘sound and television broadcasting service’ to its viewers. It will also be up for renewal on 31st December 2016. This has caused a lot of criticism from commercial channels who demand that it should now be privatised.
PART TWO – THE POLITICS BEHIND THE RUNNING OF THE BBC
In January 2007, faced with ongoing criticism at that time, The Royal Charter established the BBC Trust, a body that oversaw how the BBC programme making was run. This was an Independent body created to replace the existing Board of Governors. The original Board of Governors had consisted of twelve people appointed by the Queen who together had regulated the BBC and had represented the interests of the public, in particular those of viewers and listeners. They had existed since 1927 and were independent of the Director General and the rest of the BBC’s Executive Team. Unlike the present day Trustees they had no direct say in Programme making, but were nevertheless accountable to Parliament (and the Public) for the BBC’s performance and compliance each year. The role of Chairman of the Board of Governors had been one of the most important positions in British media.
The present Trust has twelve Trustees including a chair, Vice-chair and a member for each of the nations (England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland) of the UK. They are expected to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of public broadcasting issues in the relevant country. They also serve once appointed, a four-year term. The original Trustees, three former governors and eight new members were announced by Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in October 2006. At the time Michael Grade, then Chairman of the Governors had been appointed Chairman of the Trust but he resigned to take on a new role as Executive Chairman of ITV in November 2006. Many believed at the time that he had done all he could for the BBC under its present position and so left for a commercial channel where there was more scope for development.
The present Trustees either hold down a present job of authority or have arrived from leadership roles. They also have some previous media experience direct or indirect. The job specification states that “Candidates may also bring knowledge or experience of: broadcasting, communications and new media: competition, legal, corporate or regulatory aspects of running large organisations: expertise in areas covered by the BBC's public purposes delivering accountability to stakeholders”. There is no where in the job specifications that state that they must have knowledge of programme making, and innovative content producing although this is a major factor of their job roles as Trustees.
In October 2007, the Trust approved the BBC’s strategic direction for the next six year’s, demanding a high quality and a more distinct BBC. Under the previous governors the BBC had been quite innovative with the introduction and implementation of Interactive TV and the IPlayer. They also planned to crossover from analogue TV to the digital TV by 2012. The present day Trustees have yet to prove themselves with the smooth passover of digital TV and later considerations which they are making such as moving most of the present day programme making from London and Birmingham to northern areas like Manchester.
In 2008 The Trust was heavily criticised in the popular press for its review of the amount the BBC pays for its “TopTalent” for failing to answer whether stars like Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton were worth their large licence fee funded salaries. Ross is thought to earn £6 million each year.
Whilst the Trust is seen as being Independent from the both the government and the BBC it has yet to prove itself in the face of controversy. In the past the government of Margaret Thatcher appointed a succession of governors with the apparent intent of bringing the BBC “into line” with government policy. Marmaduke Hussey was appointed Chairman of the Board of Governors apperently with the specific agenda of bringing down the then Director General Alasdair Milne. The government also broke the tradition of always having a trade union leader on the Board of Governors.
All through this time the BBC had stood the test of time and remained impartial right through from the 1950’s and even through Thatcher’s regime, it was unfortuante that it would be broken by Tony Blair’s propoganda present day government. One of most damaging and the most unethical if not illegal acts of terrorism were about to take place which would not only leave the BBC weak but also open to a lot of unfair criticism. The bastion of trust and impartiality of the BBC was about to undergo severe scrutiny in order to reveal one source. This would later lead to the Hutton Inquiry and the resignation of two of the most senior people at the realm of the BBC.
On May 22, 2003 Dr David Kelly an employee of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and an expert in biological warfare and a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, met with a BBC journalist, Andrew Gilligan at the Charing Cross hotel in London. Mr Gilligan had been invistigating the war in Bagdad for the ‘Today’ programme and wanted to know if Dr Kelly had in the light of the government dossier found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq during his visits there. They agreed to talk on an unattributable basis, which allowed the BBC to report what was said, but not to identify the source. Dr Kelly told Gilligan of his concerns over the 45-minute claim and ascribed its inclusion in the dossier to Alaister Campbell, the Director of Communications for Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Andrew Gilligan went onto broadcast his findings on the Today programme on May 29, 2003. In the report he stated that the 45-minute claim had been placed in the dossier by the government and not attributed to any findings. Gilligan then went onto identify Alastair Campbell as the person responsible for placing the 45-minute claim fraudently within the dossier. This in effect was an act of unprecendented terrorism, the result which led to the subsequent war on Iraq. It also meant Blair’s government falsified government documents to justify their reasoning to go to war.
The story caused a political storm, with the government denying any involvement in the content of the dossier. Blair’s government pushed the BBC to reveal the name of their source, because it knew that any source who was not a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee would not have known who had a role in the preparation of the dossier. As the political fight ensued, Dr Kelly on June 30, 2003 informed his line manager at the Ministry of Defence to report his contact with Gilligan, though he believed and spoke “I am convinced that I am not his primary source of information”.
Dr Kelly was interviewed twice by his employees, who concluded that they could not be sure if he was Gilligan’s only source. Eventually they took the decision to publicise the fact that someone had come forward who might be the source. The announcement contained sufficient clues to alert journalists to guess Dr Kelly’s identity and the MoD confirmed his name when it was put to them, something which was not normal practice to do so. Normally the MoD refuses to comment on such matters, although it has been suggested that at this time the MoD was implementing a government decision to reveal Dr Kelly’s name as part of a strategy to discredit Gilligan.
Visibly disturbed with the turnout of events and how Blair’s government was turning on him, Dr Kelly was asked to appear as a witness before two committees of the House of Commons who were investigating the matter. He had already been given a warning by the MoD who had again informed him that if they found out that he had been Gilligan’s only source then they would take further appropriate action against him. When Dr Kelly appeared before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on July 15, 2003, he appeared to be under severe stress. It emerged that he had also reported his findings to another journalist, Susan Watts who worked on BBC’s Newsnight programme.
On the following day, July 16, 2003 Dr Kelly was called into give evidence to the Intelligence and security Committee. He told them that he had liased with Operation Rockingham within the Defence Intelligence Staff. The following morning Dr Kelly was working from home when he emailed his friend Judith Miller who worked at the New York Times, stating there were “many dark actors playing games “. Dr Kelly also receieved another call from MoD requesting him to state all his media contacts that he had spoken to about the “45-minute claim”.
At 3pm mid-afternoon Dr Kelly left to go for a walk around his home in Oxfordshire. He did not return. Later his wife reported him missing and his body was found in Harrowdown Hill, an area of woodlands about a mile from his home. There he was supposedly to have taken 29 Co-proxamol tablets, a drug used as a painkiller, before cutting his left wrist with a knife that he had owned since his youth. Although suicide was officially the coroner’s verdict as the cause of death, some medical experts have raised doubts. The first two paramedics on the scene Dave Bartlett and Vanessa Hunt have stated that the there was not enough blood at the location to justify the belief that he died from blood loss. A small amount of blood was found on plants near Dr Kelly’s body and a patch of blood the size of a coin on his trousers. They said they would expect to find several pints of blood at the scene of a suicide involving an arterial cut.
After his death the BBC confirmed that Dr Kelly had indeed been the source of the ‘Today’ programme report, claiming the Government had “sexed” up its dosier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The Hutton enquiry followed surrounding the mysterious death of Dr Kelly, where discrepencies made by the two paramedics were backed up by two expert physicians. Martin Birnstingl had been the president of the Vascular Surgical Society of Great Britain. He was also a former consultant at St Bartholomews Hospital in London and one of the country’s most respected vascular surgeons. He had stated in the the Guardian that he believed it was unlikely for Dr Kelly to have died by simply severing the ulner artery. He explained that arteries have muscles around them that will contruct when severed to prevent life-threatening loss of blood. “It would spray blood around and make a mess. But after the blood pressure starts to fall, the artery would contract and stop bleeding” he said.
The Guardian newspaper said It was a statement shared by Dr Bill McQuillan a former consultant at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary who for 20 years has dealt with hundreds of wrist accidents. Hutton’s findings were based on the coroner’s verdict and the evidence given to the inquiry that there was more blood around Kelly’s body, of which the paramedics doubt. As Vanessa Hunt said “I am sure I would not have missed that amount of blood”. The Hutton report also said Dr Kelly’s body was found with his head and shoulders slumped against a tree. One of the first people to have found Dr Kelly, Louise Holmes agreed that he was resting against a tree. But by the time Dave Bartlett and Vanessa Hunt arrived, Dr Kelly was lying flat, some feet from the tree. Had someone moved him? Had his body been searched? Why the discrepancy? None of the police officers at the scene said that they had touched the body.
A full independent inquest might have offered answers to some of the issues raised by the paramedics. The Hutton Inquiry prevented a full inquest from taking place and although witnesses were surrounded, they were not cross-examined under Oath.
The Oxfordfordshire coroner, Nicholas Gardiner decided there was no public interest and the family of the deceased had accepted the notion of suicide. The Hutton Inquiry agreed with this verdict. In his summing up Hutton put the entire blame for Dr Kelly’s death at the door of the BBC. Not suprising really considering he had been selected by the Blair government to lead the Inquiry he also despite evidence to the otherwise he cleared the Government of any wrongdoing. Lord Hutton said the validity of Government’s claim that Iraq had WMD ready for use was outside his remit. He said he was not in a position to judge the accuracy of key claims in the Government’s dossiers on Iraq’s WMD.
There was speculation in the media that the report had been delibrately written to clear the government, and many people believed suggestions that it was a whitewash because of the way Hutton’s report was carefully written for example he argued that the use of the word “sexed up” by Gilligan would have been taken up by the general public to mean a direct lie rather than an exaggeration.
It was a bleak day for the BBC and a major turning point. Gavyn Davies who was the BBC Chairman resigned on the day the report was published. He had solely defended Andrew Gilligan and his report and was devasted to learn the Hutton report made a shambles of the BBC trust and reporting of the “45-minute claim”. The BBC had been shaken badly and it would never be the same again.
Two days later the Director General Greg Dyke who had transformed the BBC since he joined the corporation in 2000 also resigned. His famous line “cut the crap” at the BBC had been to make swift changes in adminstration where he reduced the overall costs from 24% of total income to 15%. He was also favoured by BBC staff for his humbleness and his ability to restore staff morale. Greg Dyke had also introduced Freeview terrestrial digital transmission platform with six additional BBC channels and persuaded Sky TV to join the consortium. In 2001 he had also made huge changes in the makeup of the BBC where he had gone down on record as stating that the BBC was “hideously white”, he soon set changes in place at recruitment level to make statt more representative of the licence paying British multi-cultural population. In his resignation speech Dyke stated “I do not necessarily accept the findings of Lord Hutton”. What was more supprising was that he was forced to resign by the Board of Governors where it was reported he only retained the support of one third of the board. Ironically his counterpart then at the BBC Alan Yentob, today claims more than £27,000 in expenses not suprising that he has been under investigation. He obviously doesn’t adhere to Greg Dyke policy of “cut the crap”.
Soon after Dyke’s resignation Andrew Gilligan also resigned over his part in the Kelly affair. Making it three BBC resignations. He also questioned the value of the Hutton report by saying “The report casts a chill over all Journalism, not just the BBC’s. It seeks to hold reporters, with all the difficulties they face, to a standard that it does not appear to demand of, for instance, Government dossiers.”
Several newspapers judged the report to be so uncritical of the Government that they accused Hutton in an “establishment whitewash”. The Daily mail wrote in its editorial “were faced with the wretched spectacle of the BBC Chairman resigning while Alastair Campbell crows from the summit of his dunghill. Does this verdict, my lord, serve the real interest of truth?” The Independent included a large, mostly empty white space above the fold on its front page containing just the word ‘Whitewash’ in small red type. The Sunday Times depicted Lord Hutton as ‘Three wise monkeys’ who would ‘see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil”. Thousands of BBC workers paid for a full page advertisment in The Daily Telegraph on 31 January in order to publish a message of support for Dyke followed by a list of their names. The message read: 'The following statement is from BBC employees, presenters, reporters and contributors. It was paid for by them personally, not the BBC itself. Greg Dyke stood for brave, Independent BBC journalism that was fearless in its search for the truth; we are resolute that BBC should not step back from its determination to investigate the facts in pursuit of the truth. Through his passion and integrity Greg Dyke inspired us to make programmes of the highest quality and creativity. We are dismayed by Greg’s departure but we are determined to maintain his achievements and his vision for an Independent organisation that serves the Public above all else.”
The BBC was never to be the same again. As the phrase goes “Once bitten twice shy” it was never again going to take the same level of risks has it had taken with Andrew Gilligan. New guidelines were set in and emails sent to all the staff at the BBC in how to deal with controversial issues and stories. Everything had to be handled with care and no more high risks would be taken. In the end it was Blair’s Government who had brought the BBC ‘into line’ something which the Conservatives had failed to do. This would later lead to the dismantling of the Board of Governors and the establishment of the The Trust and later much later the proposal of privatising the BBC.
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