Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Damn, bugger, bloody, blast. That it would be bad for the BBC had been more or less expected for quite a while, that the Government and especially Hoon and Campbell would emerge without a stain on their character will be a result they couldn't dare dream of.
So, Ali C was justified in his response to Gilligan by engaging all the machinery to Government on his behalf? So the Number 10 press office working with the joint Intelligence Committee on the report the JIC made, based on intelligence from MI-6 was okay, despite the fact that Intelligence Services are supposed to be free from interference from political parties? What about the argument that a news agency has the right to report allegations made against a member of government if it's in the public interest?
This gives a green light to Government to put out information to the public that they know may not be true just so long as they don't know for certain that it's untrue. It means no-one in the Government is to be held responsible for the actions of anyone else. Most ridiculously it means that news agencies should not report accusations about people unless that person confirms the allegation themselves.
The only hope will be whether, once people have been able to read and digest the whole report, it transpires that Lord Hutton thought there was evidence on which to blame the Government but that it went beyond what he considered the limits of his investigation. He does take care to make it clear he's not judging the Government on whether the information they had was accurate or whether there were WMD in Iraq.
This is turning out to be a very disappointing week.
So, Ali C was justified in his response to Gilligan by engaging all the machinery to Government on his behalf? So the Number 10 press office working with the joint Intelligence Committee on the report the JIC made, based on intelligence from MI-6 was okay, despite the fact that Intelligence Services are supposed to be free from interference from political parties? What about the argument that a news agency has the right to report allegations made against a member of government if it's in the public interest?
This gives a green light to Government to put out information to the public that they know may not be true just so long as they don't know for certain that it's untrue. It means no-one in the Government is to be held responsible for the actions of anyone else. Most ridiculously it means that news agencies should not report accusations about people unless that person confirms the allegation themselves.
The only hope will be whether, once people have been able to read and digest the whole report, it transpires that Lord Hutton thought there was evidence on which to blame the Government but that it went beyond what he considered the limits of his investigation. He does take care to make it clear he's not judging the Government on whether the information they had was accurate or whether there were WMD in Iraq.
This is turning out to be a very disappointing week.
