The highly popular head of the legal department, Glenn del Medico, has been talking about some of the controversies in which he was involved.  Glenn is about to retire from the BBC.  This from The Guardian:

BBC lawyer attacks 'biased' Hutton report

Senior legal adviser says inquiry was a waste of time

Matt Wells, media correspondent
Wednesday July 7, 2004


The BBC's most senior legal adviser last night called the Hutton report "biased" and accused elements in the police of still being reluctant to tackle racism.

Glenn del Medico, who is retiring as the BBC's chief programme legal adviser next month, said the Hutton inquiry had been a "dreadful waste of time", and revealed that the Greater Manchester police had lobbied the BBC at a "very senior level" to try to prevent transmission of the Secret Policeman documentary, which revealed racism in the force's training college.

Mr Del Medico, speaking at an event to mark his 38 years at the corporation - during which he has dealt with almost every legal controversy it encountered - said he would have cleared Andrew Gilligan's Iraq dossier story for broad cast if he had been consulted on it.

Speaking to an audience of lawyers and journalists at a Media Society event in London, he said Gilligan had been a "very exciting" journalist to work with. "He exposed several excellent stories especially on defence matters. He was a journalist who was prepared to walk the line and had an editor, Rod Liddle, who was prepared to take risks."

Questioned on the Hutton report, Mr Del Medico said it had created an "extraordinary amount of fuss" over an issue that did not deserve it. "I think it was a dreadful waste of time over something that we got about 90% right.

"I think that the consequences were extreme in every respect. I'm sure there are far better things for the authorities to concentrate on than one line in an early-morning radio programme."

Mr Del Medico, a highly respected figure within the BBC and the legal world, was critical of Lord Hutton's conclusions. "It's unfortunate that Lord Hutton made such a biased report," he said. "He got it wrong, but then judges don't always get things right. I don't think that he should be cast into a pit - the world will give their verdict on Hutton, and they already have. I think I'm right in saying that most people don't believe it."

He said Lord Hutton had spent too much of his time on the so-called qualified privilege defence, which gives journalists protection in well-researched stories that are deemed to have been in the public interest but turn out to be wrong.

"I don't think it was necessary for Lord Hutton to talk about qualified privilege - and of course he got it wrong anyway."

Discussing the Secret Policeman documentary, in which reporter Mark Daly infiltrated Greater Manchester police's training college to expose racism among recruits, Mr Del Medico said it was one of the best current affairs exposés in recent years.

"I thought it was an incredible piece of reporting. We did walk a very tight line on this case, we were all very concerned - indeed very frightened - about what might have happened to Mark."

He said Greater Manchester police made strenuous efforts to stop the programme going out, even though it knew of the seriousness of the allegations about to be made in the film. The Guardian understands the chief constable of the force met Greg Dyke, then the corporation's director general.

Mr Del Medico said: "There were very hairy meetings between senior levels of Greater Manchester police and senior levels of the BBC. It's a bit of a commentary on the way in which the police do not necessarily have a great deal of interest in fighting racism."

The lawyer was being interviewed by the documentary maker Michael Cockerell: the pair worked on the Maggie's Militant Tendency film, which accused Tory MPs of being linked to far-right groups.

He also revealed that he only had "very short notice" of a report on the 10 O'Clock News in 2001 that accused the Oryx mining firm of links with al-Qaida.

The firm sued, and the BBC settled, admitting it had mixed up the names of an Oryx director and a jailed terrorist.

Mr Del Medico said it was "only natural" that the BBC should rein in its journalism after the Hutton report. But he insisted there would soon be a return to hard-hitting investigations. "We are still doing hard investigative stuff, there's some really good stuff coming out soon."