BRITAIN: The Hutton Report into the death of the British government weapons scientist, Dr David Kelly, reserved its most damning criticism yesterday for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Lord Hutton branded the corporation as having a "defective" editorial system which allowed its reporter Andrew Gilligan to make "unfounded" claims which questioned the government's integrity.
Mr Gilligan's unscripted May 29th report on the BBC radio 4 Today morning news programme on the government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction included "very grave allegations in relation to a subject of great importance".
They were allowed to remain unchecked by the BBC's management and governors until the damage was done, Lord Hutton said.
In his report, Mr Gilligan, the programme's defence correspondent, said the government had inserted intelligence into the dossier probably knowing it to be wrong or questionable, and had ordered the dossier to be "sexed up".
Lord Hutton said: "Where a reporter is intending to broadcast or publish information impugning the integrity of others, the management of his broadcasting company or newspaper should ensure that a system is in place where his editor or editors give careful consideration to the wording to the report and to whether it is right in all circumstances to broadcast it.
"I consider that the editorial system which the BBC permitted was defective in that Mr Gilligan was allowed to broadcast his report at 6.07 a.m. without editors having seen a script of what he was going to say and having considered whether it should be approved."
The BBC governors made a vigorous public defence of the accuracy of the story and their right to broadcast it in the face of what they considered an unprecedented attack by Mr Alastair Campbell, then Downing Street's head of communications.
But they were also failing to give the government's complaints full consideration, Lord Hutton found.
They did not properly investigate the government's complaints about the content of the report. They failed to examine Mr Gilligan's notes, which did not back up the most serious allegations, and they were not aware of the concerns of Today editor Kevin Marsh about Mr Gilligan's reporting style.
A June 23rd email from Mr Marsh to Stephen Mitchell, the head of radio news, criticised Mr Gilligan for his "loose use of language and lack of judgment in some of his phraseology". Such comments were "clearly relevant" to the government's complaints, argued Lord Hutton.
He continued: "The governors should have recognised more fully than they did that their duty to protect the independence of the BBC was not incompatible with giving proper consideration to whether there was validity in the government's complaints, no matter how strongly worded by Mr Campbell, that the allegations against its integrity reported in Mr Gilligan's broadcast were unfounded and the governors failed to give this issue proper consideration."
There should have been a more thorough investigation, particularly since the government had stated that Mr Gilligan's report was wrong, Lord Hutton said. - (PA)