BRITAIN: The British public appeared divided in its reaction to the report by Lord Hutton into the Kelly affair, with a majority of respondents to an opinion poll saying that they did not consider his findings fair or convincing.
The British media generally reacted with dismay to Lord Hutton's assessment that the BBC must bear the brunt of the blame for events leading up to the death of the respected biologist and weapons inspector, Dr David Kelly. Editorial writers and columnists expressed scepticism at the exoneration enjoyed by the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, the Secretary for Defence, Mr Geoff Hoon, and the former Downing Street spokesman Mr Alastair Campbell.
Letter writers and callers to radio programmes seemed to side mostly with the BBC, many repeating a word that was widely used in newspapers to describe the Hutton report: whitewash.
"Whitewash applied carefully and thinly will last years. Too thick and it will flake off in no time," wrote one reader to The Guardian. "Thank you Lord Hutton . . . A great day for truth and clarity," wrote another.
"Hutton does us a great disservice," wrote author and journalist Max Hastings in The Daily Mail. "We have the wretched spectacle of a BBC chairman resigning while Alastair Campbell crows from the summit of his dunghill."
An opinion poll published in The Evening Standard found that 50 per cent of people questioned were not convinced by Lord Hutton's conclusion that the government "did not act in a dishonourable, underhand and duplicitous manner in identifying Dr Kelly's name in public." Of 521 people interviewed, 56 per cent did not believe it was fair of Lord Hutton to lay most of the blame on the BBC, compared to 35 per cent who believed it was. Asked if they agreed that the report was a "whitewash," 49 per cent said they did, while 40 per cent did not.
Most people, 62 per cent, said the Hutton findings would make no difference to how they voted in the next election. However, 27 per cent said Mr Blair should resign, and 45 per cent that Mr Hoon should go. The left-leaning Guardian demurred, saying that while Mr Gilligan "got more right than he got wrong" in the 19 reports he made that day, he had made errors, used "sloppy language" and "made serious allegations that were simply mistaken".
"The BBC should have been much quicker to identify those errors, to correct them and to apologise," the Guardian said.
Public will prove a wiser judge of Blair than Hutton - opinion, page 14