From Ariel, 20th September 2004

VULNERABILITY OF A NATURAL BORN WINNER

Mark Thompson assesses Greg Dyke's account of his time at the BBC, some
of which he shared and some he watched from outside as Hutton's verdict
floored a determined fighter


Re-reading the Hutton saga really is like watching one of the great stage
tragedies. You remember what happens, but can't help hoping that somehow
this time it will be different. Maybe this time the handkerchief won't
fall. Maybe this time Othello won't fall for Iago's tricks. He always
does of course. But that doesn't make the play any easier to watch. It
makes it harder. Harder and, in a way, more puzzling.

Of all the emotions in Greg Dyke's book, Inside Story - the warmth, the
anger, the joie-de-vivre, the sense of betrayal - the strongest by far is
bafflement. To this day, Greg still seems bemused about how a man who was
not just the most popular DG in the BBC's history, but one of life's
natural winners; a chief executive who had already achieved a lot, but
who was on a roll with the big prizes still ahead; a leader who was
standing up clearly and courageously for the most important of all the
BBC's guiding principles; how this man could be so abruptly, so
unceremoniously, stripped of it all.

Greg suggests answers, of course: a bullying government and a board of
governors 'behaving like frightened rabbits caught in the headlights'. No
doubt rage and aggression played their part (think of Alastair Campbell's
determination to 'crappity smack Gilligan', or that weird, presidential address he
gave on the day Hutton came out). As for the governors, opinions are
still divided about exactly what happened in those last, panicky hours in
Broadcasting House.

But one doesn't need a full-blown conspiracy theory, or even a couple of
posh ladies on a grassy knoll, to explain what happened in the immediate
aftermath of Lord Hutton's report. The stakes were impossibly high by
then and the report did not contain a single crumb of comfort for the
BBC. I asked one seasoned broadcaster that night whether he thought there
was any way that Gavyn and Greg could have hung on, and he replied in the
chilly language of the crash investigator: Hutton, he said, was 'non-
survivable'.


To understand what happened, you have to look not at the high drama of
January 2004, nor even at the limitations and non sequiturs of Lord
Hutton's report, but at decisions taken many months earlier - before
David Kelly's death had turned what had begun as one more spat between
BBC news and the No 10 press office into a gladiatorial fight to the
death. Why did first Greg and then the governors decide to dig in behind
Andrew Gilligan's report? Were they right to do so? And why did they give
themselves so little room for manoeuvre?

The government would claim at the height of the row that Gilligan's
famous 6.07 report was '100 percent wrong'. That simply isn't the case.
Gilligan was on to an outstanding story; David Kelly was a first class,
wholly credible source and his doubts about the government's first
dossier on weapons of mass destruction shone a new light on the origins
of the Iraq War. It was exactly the kind of investigative journalism
which the BBC should pursue.

Nor did it just slip onto the air. Inside Story reminds us of the care
which the Today editor, Kevin Marsh, took with the story before
transmission. Marsh was not called as a witness to the Hutton inquiry
and, perhaps as a result, Lord Hutton seems to have formed a mistaken
impression of the BBC's editorial processes. The book also sets out the
steps Greg took to satisfy himself of the solidity of the journalism once
the row had begun. Greg messed up his appearance before Hutton (a
'non-event' according to Inside Story, but it was worse than that),
inadvertently giving the impression that he had let it drift for weeks.
In fact, he had asked senior BBC editors to investigate it as soon as the
scale of the government's dissatisfaction became clear. From then on, he
was fully engaged.

Unfortunately, if Gilligan's story wasn't completely wrong, it wasn't
exactly right either. Rather than simply reporting what Kelly had told
him, Gilligan had also presented one of his own inferences as if it had
come out of Kelly's mouth. The allegations had not been put to No 10 - an
elementary requirement for fairness, and essential if one is to claim any
kind of qualified privilege. Later it would emerge that Gilligan had
written an email to the researcher of one of the MPs on the foreign
affairs committee in which he compromised his own source.

Although Greg today accepts that there were errors, 'a couple of which
were serious', he argues that Andrew Gilligan's story was 'overwhelmingly
true' and devotes an important chapter to showing why, based on what we
now know. But we have to judge the editorial and management decisions
about the Gilligan story on the basis of what we knew then, not now, and
above all on the basis of Gilligan's contemporaneous sources and
evidence. If we put on the pitiless spectacles of hindsight and focus
solely on the basis on which the story was broadcast at the time, then we
have to conclude that there were serious shortcomings in the Gilligan
report and that they should have been identified and corrected sooner
than they were.

'Broadly right' isn't good enough. All complaints should be taken
seriously, even if one suspects the motives of the complainant. This is
why Ron Neil's post-Hutton recommendations are right.

For many people and certainly for Greg himself, the Gilligan affair was
about much wider issues: the overall justification for the war, New
Labour and spin, Tony Blair's trustworthiness as prime minister. But,
hard though it is for many people who were caught up in the emotions of
January to accept, none of these are matters on which the BBC can take a
view and they can't affect our judgement on the editorial decisions that
were taken at the time. How easy it is to say that, of course, when
you're not in the pressure-cooker of personality and politics that
Gilligan/Hutton became.

But there are two broader points to make. We need investigative
journalism today more than ever - think how much more we know about the
war in Iraq because of David Kelly's courage - and even the most rigorous
investigations require journalists and editors to use their judgement and
take calculated risks. We have to be prepared to go on taking those
risks. I'd like to see more, not less, investigative journalism as a
result of Hutton.

Second, there was one wider issue that really was worth going to the wall
for: the BBC's independence from political interference. Whether
intentionally or not, the mixture of reckless language and off-the-record
threats from both officials and politicians - one cabinet minister
warning a senior BBC journalist in terms that the government would exact
revenge on the corporation when it got the chance - led both the director
general and the governors to conclude that a fundamental assault on the
BBC's independence was under way.

That conviction may have led to some tactical errors (in particular the
unwise emergency meeting of the governors that gave more or less
unqualified support to the management position). It may have made a
dispassionate consideration of Alastair Campbell's specific complaints
that much harder to achieve. But they were right to see independence as
an absolute priority.

The BBC has had to fight for its independence before and it certainly
will again. I only hope that if the present management team and board of
governors are forced to stand up and be counted, we can do it with a
fraction of the integrity and determination which Greg and Gavyn brought
to bear.

But there's much more to Inside Story than Hutton. Greg's infectious
energy, that personal magic, was obviously there from the start: you can
see it in the toothy seven-year-old who beams out from one of the
photographs. He deals entertainingly yet with great tenderness with his
family and his early years, then student days, early politics, slightly
aimless twenties and then the break - an interview for a researcher post
at LWT. Greg knows that the big cheese is John Birt, then head of
features and current affairs - and is delighted when John laughs at all
his jokes, only to discover that the person he thinks is John Birt is in
fact Barry Cox and that Birt is the strong, silent type in the corner
making careful notes.

What follows is a meteoric, stunningly creative, not to mention faintly
plutocratic progress through commercial television, with plenty of high
points (Roland Rat, the directorship of Man U) as well as regular bust-
ups: Greg is one of the ones who get fired. Throughout it all, you never
get a sense of Greg the politician, Greg the executive, Greg the private
man - you just get Greg. This utter honesty and immediacy may have been a
vulnerability in the low politics of Hutton, but it makes for a uniquely
inspiring and loveable human being.

And then the BBC. It was a job he wanted desperately, perhaps without
quite knowing why or what he would do if he got it; and to an
extraordinary extent, his agenda as DG emerged out of a conversation he
had with the staff of the BBC. He actually listened to you (one can
almost hear the tut-tutting from the portraits in the council chamber)
and took up your cause. He breathed confidence into the place and the
panache of his early strategic strokes - especially the move of the main
BBC One news, where I was a co-conspirator - reminded everyone how fast
and decisive the organisation can be when it chooses.

The account in Inside Story is not always pin sharp. Awkward moments tend
to get, at best, a fleeting mention. He is pretty ungenerous about his
predecessor John Birt, who had handed him such a brilliant inheritance in
virtually every department other than staff morale; but Greg belongs to
that generation of tv people who, despite backbreaking diaries and
ferocious workloads, still somehow found the time to nurse grudges and
vendettas stretching over decades. Overall though, it is a story he can
be proud of: dazzling strategic coups like Freeview and unencryption and
the flowering of a quite new, more egalitarian, more contemporary
internal culture. And throughout it all, Greg was able somehow not to be
management at all: he was both the teacher and the naughty boy in the
back of the class.

Greg is the second DG in less than 20 years to leave Broadcasting House
with, in Spike Milligan's phrase, his head held high and his feet held
higher (that's two out of the last four if you're counting - which, let's
face it, I am). On Channel 4 on Sunday night he was almost in tears when
he talked about the emails he'd received from staff when he left. It was
hard not to cry watching him. But despite his relatively short tenure, he
is one of the great DGs and I believe - and will do my best to ensure -
that what he achieved will endure.

At the very end of the book, he says he thinks it's now time to move on,
and that must be right. You only have to talk to him for five minutes to
see that he is still brimming with great ideas, as well as with mischief.
And out there somewhere there are fresh coups to pull off, fresh triumphs
to savour. But I hope I get the chance to work with him again; it didn't
really feel like work and, like most people in the BBC, I miss his laugh.


When I think of Greg, I don't think of Hutton, I think of Greg charming a
room of jaded journalists or office-workers back to life, or talking with
passion about one of the many things he really believed in. Not Greg at
bay, but Greg causing trouble again, Greg flying.


Inside Story by Greg Dyke, published by Harper Collins £20 (£15 BBC Shop
while stocks last)