Forum for former BBC staff

Forum for former BBC staff
http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> News and Comment >> Harris on Hutton http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1075637273 Message started by Forum Admin on Feb 1^st, 2004, 12:08pm

Title: Harris on Hutton
Post by Forum Admin on Feb 1^st, 2004, 12:08pm

Robert Harris, in the Sunday Times, offers harsh criticism of Tony Blair and particularly Alastair Campbell. He says, in part:

The government’s most sensible reaction to Lord Hutton’s report would surely have been a conspicuous display of magnanimity. Instead, the Campbell approach of grinding the BBC’s face into the dirt has succeeded in turning a victory into a public relations disaster. ....None of this will bring back Davies, Dyke and Gilligan, nor alter the practical reality that the BBC has suffered a terrible defeat. But it does suggest that the government, too, is in for a rough time.

There has been more than a touch of Richard Nixon about Campbell’s recent, indiscriminate lashing out at the media — a similar kind of compulsive, tough-guy, foul-mouthed paranoia; a similar loss of all sense of proportion; a similar small-minded bitterness in victory. Even the BBC’s broadcasting rivals — even newspapers traditionally unsympathetic to it — have begun to close ranks in the face of this onslaught. And it is deeply unwise, as Nixon discovered, to unite the whole of the media class against you.

Lord Hutton’s was a devastating verdict on the BBC, against which there can be, in legal terms, no appeal. But there are other courts and other verdicts that may count for more in the long run. I doubt whether public opinion and history will find so overwhelmingly in favour of Campbell and the government.

Read the whole piece here.

Title: Re: Harris on Hutton
Post by Ian_Mitchell on Feb 1^st, 2004, 1:57pm

.....and the bottom line says:

"John Humphrys is away"