Chill
: Harry Hatchett says, rightly, that the government Hutton inquiry into the Gilligan/Kelly scandal in Britain will have a chilling effect on news sources.
: By the way, the noose is getting tighter and tighter around Andrew Gilligan’s neck.
10 responses to “Chill”
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You know what I think has a chilling effect on news sources? The BBC frigging putting words in their mouths, that’s what!
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A top tip seems to be make your own tapes of meetings and inform the journalist you are doing so.
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I’ve been following the “Hutton” comments on several British blogs. I can hardly believe how bitter and intractable people seem to be about all this. Their minds are made up; don’t bother than with facts.
A few hours ago, I commented on one site that the BBC surely had a bad day today. Good grief! from the reaction to that, one might have thought I’d threatened the Queen. -
Its funny how those on the other side of the Atlantic believe that the BBC is in the wrong and those of us on Blightey who’ve lived with the spinmeisters can see where the real culprits are lurking.
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I agree with Mike G that it is the behaviour of journalists that should be the real worry to ‘sources’.
I’m also amused that the term “off the record” has somehow come to mean just that ‘comments won’t be attributed’. If I said something to a journalist off the record, I’d be pretty damn angry if what I’d said entered the record the next bleedin’ morning.
I always took “off the record” to mean ‘non-disclosure’. The information is relayed so’s that the reporter knows what’s going on, not so’s that it can be directly reported. A skilled reporter (more Mangold than Gilligan) should use off the record info to assist in furthering investigations in a way that can’t be traced back to the source.
Kelly was effectively revealed as the source the moment Gilligan relayed what he’d said (even with embellishment) on the radio. -
Hey Sayeed, I live “on” Blightey and I can see that the guilty party in this instance is the BBC. It’s best to speak for yourself in these matters, and not try and represent the entirety of England.
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It’s funny when people who listen to leftist media all day deny that their consent is being manufactured, even though they’re sure everyone else’s is.
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Making people reluctant to think twice about talking to the media is the whole point of the Hutton enquiry, and a good thing too.
The most revealing thing about the Watts tapes was how lightly Kelly seemed to take the whole the interview -
Seyed,
I live in England and highly disturbed by the BBC’s actions. People have a high degree of trust in the journalism of the BBC, and this is being undermined by sloppy tabloid-style reporting. -
Seyed
From all that I have seen – and I have Whitehall experience – it seems to me that Gilligan gave a skewed report, with NIL corroboration that the dossier had been “transformed” including insertion by No 10 of the 45-minute claim, and that the BBC management then made the situation far worse by blindly defending him.
Nowhere did people recognise that Gilligan (a so-called defence reporter) appeared to have an entirely false idea of how the Joint Intelligence Committee operates and who it comprises. Susan Watts (a science rather than defence reporter) clearly understood the JIC much better, which is why she dismissed Kelly’s assertions as mere speculation.
Public respect for the BBC has already been damaged – and I think there will be worse to come when Hutton reports.
