Hutton Inquiry: BBC To Get Trashed?

[oedo]

I´m certainly not the only one smelling a double standard in the Hutton Report:
- innocent until proven guilty for Blair and Hoon (which is generally ok for me)
- guilty until proven innocent for the BBC (which makes me more and more wonder in what kind of political system we currently live)

[CharlesBHoff]

Tony (Bush lapdog) Blair than war criminal put alot of pressure on Lord Hutton (unfit to be judge) to rule the way he did. Lord Hutton need to be investlate for his bias ruleing in Lapdog flavor.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
Agathon

You are a guy with entrenched views.

For you to think that the everyone else is the same is natural but wrong.

The last post doesn't represent my own view on Britain's strategy. Brzezinski (hardly a lefty) in The Grand Chessboard makes much the same claims.

Your post shows your interest to be to reconcile events to your entrenched views.

You show not the slightest interest in the evidence the inquiry heard.

Not at all. Journalists have been complaining all day about the report - many of whom attended the inquiry. Apparently only The Sun was unequivocally praiseworthy with The Times a close second. Both Murdoch papers, so that is no surprise.

My view is that the inquiry was bound to be a whitewash. Both for the reasons stated above and for the simple reason that the accused got to determine the terms of reference.

Good luck with your approach. People with strong and entrenched views are often very effective. But if you are asked to conduct an inquiry - turn it down.

Typical. You take no notice of anything I wrote. Do you really think, given the likely consequences, that Hutton would have trashed the government. Doing so would have made immense waves. Or do you not believe that a negative report would have caused a major foreign policy crisis?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp


Yes- I spent a month studying the Strangeways inquiry as part of my degree.

Agathon- the problem with inquiries is not their compilation, content or presentation. It's the fact that governments fail to act on them, and that it's far easier to pass blinkered comments from a position of ignorance than it is to actually read the buggers and think constructively off the back of it.

We had a comment about journalists muttering "whitewash". Well the Murdoch papers are championing the report in order to kick the BBC, the Independent is sneering "whitewash" to kick the government, and the "Daily Mail" is in a tizzy over which bete noir it wants to slap first. Yup- what a shock. Relentless sticking to settled editorial stances of long standing.

The problem is with the media, the government and with the public being too ****ing thick, bloody-minded and apathetic to actually consider a finding that challenges their existing beliefs. So you'll forgive me for failing to accord a great deal of respect to your parade of knee-jerk reactions founded on nothing more corroborative than what some bloke down the pub said.

Lord Hutton is a highly-respected and effective legal mind, and was considered an acceptable choice by those calling for the inquiry in the first place. Now you can feel free to criticise the act of going to war against public opinion and/or on faulty military intelligence, but calling this a whitewash just won't cut it.

Well it ain't just me. And for the record I said this would happen before the event.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Park Avenue

This really is ridiculous. If there was any shred of credibility to what you are saying, we wouldn't be seeing a mass exodus of management from the BBC.

And if you'd bothered to read you would have seen that Davies said that the BBC had said it would stick by the result no matter what. As he said, he didn't choose the referee, but has to stick to the decision. Read between the lines and you can see he thinks that Hutton was FOS.

And there's no removing Blair at the next election unless he dies or really ****s up with something. Neither of which I can see happening. I'd give a 90% of Blair being around until 2009.

Really, we'll see about that. I give him another year at most. He's already really ****ed up with something. That's the problem. Look at the revolt over top up fees.

[Solly]

Look at the revolt over top up fees.

Still won though didn't he.

[Jamski]

You can read the whole report now - I put it in its own thread.

-Jam

[lightblue]

I suppose that within Hutton's view of his remit he was probably right. But he made a narrow remit even narrower.

If i were a UK voter (instead of just a permanent resident), I'd insist on a full inquiry into the obvious intelligence failures that led to the war. Even the US is starting to accept its intelligence was flawed.

[Solly]

The thing is, such an event would likely exonerate Blair again. And again you'd get claims that the inquiry was "full of ****", biased, or whatever, by the same anti-Hutton idiots that are emerging now.

Because while Blair might have misled the British public over there being WoMD in Iraq, it would be found that he did believe Iraq had WoMD and hence did not knowingly mislead. Crucial difference.

And WoMD are not the only case for war anyway. There are plenty others, and not using them in addition is the government's worst fault here.

[East Street Trader]

A thing that is worth remembering is that those who appoint people to conduct inquiries very often pick a judge or a lawyer with court experience (unless the inquiry involves delving into some highly technical subject).

Now this is natural. An inquiry must arrange to take evidence. And to do so in circumstances where there are always a range of individuals or groups with special interests. A judge or a court lawyer has daily experience of the processes required. And of all those things which experience shows to matter when you have to evaluate whether evidence is worth anything or not.

But when you appoint a lawyer you predetermine a lot about the approach that will be taken. And about the issues which will be addressed.

Lord Hutton took great care to identify and list out the exact issues he understood his remit to require him to examine and to form an opinion upon.

I think he did well in this. But I am a lawyer too so that is not surprising.

Others comment that he was too narrow.

Now the point is this. As a judge he is used to trying issues which can be resolved either by making findings of fact as to what exactly happened or by arguement in which it is possible to refer to authority - that is how arguemts over legal points are conducted.

What he is not used to doing - and would need to be dragged to kicking and screaming - is the process of making value judgments on wide ranging matters where all sorts of personal views are what really matter.

So he is at home examining whether an individual (Blair) told the truth about what happened at a meeting, at home in examining the question of whether Dr Kelly commited suicide or not, at home in examining whether an interview conducted by a journalist gave him a proper basis to allege bad faith but he is not at home in expressing an opinion on such a broad question as should the UK have sent troops to Iraq.

Now there is no doubt what sparked off the need for this inquiry. It is the fact of Dr Kelly's death. On the face of it he appeared to have been the victim, partly of his own folly, but also of an attempt by Blair and his government to, yet again, manipulate the media (and public opinion) and, in this instance to have done so in a particularly underhand way.

So I agree with Lord Hutton that he was not called upon to address such matters as whether the "intelligence" in the dossier was sound; or whether the political decision to send troops to Iraq was a good one or a bad one.

Those are issues which arise whether Dr Kelly kills himself or not.

Moreover, if that is wrong and Lord Hutton should have interpreted his terms of appointment to extend to such matters I for one would think that daft. Because it is silly to think that you can resolve things like that by the process of taking evidence. They both involve highly complex value judgments.

"Intelligence" should either be left to those who claim they know what they are doing with it or - my own preference - ignored for the complete rubbish it almost always is. And wide ranging political issues are best left to political debate - in parliament, in the press, in the pub or wherever.

If someone disagrees about that and wants an inquiry into one of those issues - well don't pick a lawyer to conduct it. Chalk does not mix with cheese.

It rather illustrates the absurdity of holding an inquiry to answer such questions that it is pretty well impossible to think of the sort of person you should appoint. Anyone impartial is likely to suffer from the same problems as a judge. And what is the point of appointing a partizan?

[lightblue]

I am not necessarily after Blair's head, but I think certain institutions such as JIC or MI6 should take some responsibility.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by MikeH
I still think that everyone was wrong and the BBC has got the kick in the arse it deserved but the government hasn't got it's because the things it'd really get crucified for (eg. the fact we went to war because of WoMD and there not being any, which was lucky because they didn't bother equiping our troops to deal with them anyway...) weren't covered by the report.

Hence, a brilliant smokescreen.

Well the government can always be taken down in an election if people perceive it to have been negligent or worse. Hell, they actually don't need any reason at all.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Park Avenue

Still won though didn't he.

Um... no. A Phyrric victory at best. When you only win the vote because some members switched votes at the last minute purely to show you that they have the power to make or break you, you don't have long in politics.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by lightblue
I suppose that within Hutton's view of his remit he was probably right. But he made a narrow remit even narrower.

That's a dubious claim. The general consensus among journalists who attended the hearings was absolute shock and they heard the same evidence he did.

Again, a big own goal here. Blair would have been better served by a report that doled out a few reasonably severe, but not fatal, slaps to the govermnent along with the material on the BBC. As it stands though, it looks like a whitewash to the majority.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by CharlesBHoff
Tony (Bush lapdog) Blair than war criminal put alot of pressure on Lord Hutton (unfit to be judge) to rule the way he did. Lord Hutton need to be investlate for his bias ruleing in Lapdog flavor.

Good luck with substantiating any part of that, and report your English teacher to the authorities.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Agathon


That's a dubious claim. The general consensus among journalists who attended the hearings was absolute shock and they heard the same evidence he did.

Yet despite this alleged fact (based on third-hand testimony that you never witnessed) there is absolutely no consensus across the papers, as I already detailed.

Again, a big own goal here. Blair would have been better served by a report that doled out a few reasonably severe, but not fatal, slaps to the govermnent along with the material on the BBC. As it stands though, it looks like a whitewash to the majority.

The report was not drafted to serve Blair, for better or worse.

[chequita guevara]

I hear this morning that 56% percent of Brits think the Report is a whitewash and support the BBC.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp


Yet despite this alleged fact (based on third-hand testimony that you never witnessed) there is absolutely no consensus across the papers, as I already detailed.

Um... no. All but the Sun have reservations. The lefty papers say it was a whitewash, the others that it was not even handed.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

ICM polled that 3 times as many people trust the BBC compared to Blair.

Then again, this morning I heard with my own earsGreg **** admitting that the BBC was wrong. So where's that going?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Agathon


Um... no. All but the Sun have reservations. The lefty papers say it was a whitewash, the others that it was not even handed.

The Independent had a headline reading "Whitewash?". Note the question mark.

The Guardian reported that the public still trusts the BBC more and some editorial pieces suggested a less than even-handed approach.

I haven't read the Mirror because I've grown out of comics.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp

The Independent had a headline reading "Whitewash?". Note the question mark.

The Guardian reported that the public still trusts the BBC more and some editorial pieces suggested a less than even-handed approach.

The Telegraph had a piece as well. There's links to the various papers at the Grauniad. Jon Snow wrote an article criticising it as well.

I haven't read the Mirror because I've grown out of comics.

[Ramo]

Fortunately, we have the inquiry transcripts to test against Lord Hutton's almost comically tendentious conclusions. We know, for example, that Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell asked the joint intelligence committee's John Scarlett to redraft that part of the September dossier which suggested Saddam Hussein might use chemical and biological weapons "if he believes his regime is under threat" - and Scarlett did so, by taking out the qualifications. We know that Campbell asked Scarlett to change a claim that the Iraqi military "may be able" to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes to "are able". But Lord Hutton is of the view that this is not at all the "sexing up" that the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan quoted Kelly as complaining about. We also know that Blair chaired the meeting at which the strategy for outing Kelly was adopted, even though the prime minister later denied having anything to do with it. But, in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of Lord Hutton, that was entirely consistent and honourable.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/kelly...133918,00.html

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
Then again, this morning I heard with my own earsGreg **** admitting that the BBC was wrong. So where's that going?

It's called falling on your sword. Kay is pushing the CIA on Bush's sword here in America.

[lord of the mark]

another great advocate of free, fair and balanced media has come out in defense of the BBC

The Russian Minister of Media


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3445689.stm

[CerberusIV]

If you don't actually watch the UK media closely it is easy to overlook the stance many outlets took when this first blew up, the speculation and subjective reporting of the evidence during the hearings (not everything significant in the final report made the news at the time) and the efforts the TV and newspapers made to portray the report as a potential disaster to Tonly Blair. Taking that into account they were never going to be happy with anything that cleared Blair, Hoon and Campbell.

Add in that a major media organisation came out of this very badly and the media here are somewhat uncertain. They can't bring themselves to accept the government is in the clear - many have never entirely got out of the habit of looking for excuses to have a go at the government that they acquired when John Major was PM and the current opposition are not newsworthy - will never admit that they whipped up speculation without anything much to support it and yet need to say something. Add to that the fact that whilst they don't like the BBC in a media versus government tussle the media will stick together for self preservation. Result - the media are trying to spin Hutton into being unfair and wrong. Ironic when the whole thing started out of allegations of government spin.

[Solly]

Great post Cerberus.

Ming, can you changed the thread title to Hutton Inquiry: BBC Gets Trashed please

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Park Avenue

I'm not saying the BBC should dissolve.

Could have fooled me...

Isn't your vision of Britain one in which the Blacks, Pakis, women, pinkos and queers have been put in their place and are choking to death in Dark Satanic Mills, whilst they are entertained by the Dirty Digger?

[Solly]

Isn't your vision of Britain one in which the Blacks, Pakis, women, pinkos and queers have been put in their place and are choking to death in Dark Satanic Mills, whilst they are entertained by the Dirty Digger?

My ideal vision is one of strong, cohesive communities. However, this becomes less and less possible the more differences there are between people. So it may be necessary to exclude some. But that's OK - they generally have their own space elsewhere to form communities of their own.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Park Avenue


My ideal vision is one of strong, cohesive communities. However, this becomes less and less possible the more differences there are between people. So it may be necessary to exclude some. But that's OK - they generally have their own space elsewhere to form communities of their own.

translation: I am a racist.

[Solly]