tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64063001155350235342024-03-13T01:39:18.807+00:00Story CurveKevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.comBlogger98125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-37150831916185587142023-02-08T10:33:00.002+00:002023-02-08T10:41:20.460+00:00Balancing the elephants<p>An insightful <a href="https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2023/02/fiscal-reporting-at-bbc.html" target="_blank">post from Simon Wren Lewis</a> on fiscal reporting at the BBC and its<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/documents/thematic-review-taxation-public-spending-govt-borrowing-debt.pdf" target="_blank"> recent report.</a></p><p>Not much to disagree with ... except for this.</p><p>Alongside demonstrable ignorance in the way some of the BBC reports government getting and spending, there is, Simon argues, another pachyderm on the sofa:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">'The second elephant is one which the report could not avoid, and that is in adopting impartiality as the overriding frame of reference ... </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">its biggest problem is that the truth becomes of secondary importance. Impartiality seems to be defined in terms of what people think, even if what they think is just wrong.' </span></i></span></p></blockquote><p>Simon is absolutely right about the lack of knowledge amongst the newsroom generalists, the journalists who write the news scripts, oversee the graphics, book the guests and brief the presenters.</p><p>On ‘impartiality’, though, he's sort of right. And sort of wrong.</p><p>Right, because there is a damaging frame that has exactly the outcome he says. Wrong, because ‘impartiality’ isn’t it.</p><p>It’s ‘balance’. And the two are very different from each other. Sadly, very, very few BBC editors and executives – including the DG, if his Select Committee appearance back in September is anything to go by – understand that difference.</p><p>It’s not a new confusion. Since 1926, the BBC has had to grapple publicly with governments and the powerful over ‘impartiality’ – what it means and how to both achieve and demonstrate it – and for a generation or more it’s realised it’s a problem that’s constantly shape-shifting. </p><p>Way back in 2007, just as we were all taking our first tentative steps into social media, the then BBC Trust commissioned independent TV producer and former BBC news man John Bridcut to think his way through what ‘impartiality’ meant in what he called ‘multi-polar Britain’.</p><p>John’s report, <i><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/editorial_standards/impartiality/safeguarding_impartiality.html" target="_blank">From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel</a></i>, mischievously positioned ‘impartiality’ in the sphere of alchemy, its ingredients:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>‘a mixture of accuracy, balance, context, distance, evenhandedness, fairness, objectivity, open-mindedness, rigour, self-awareness, transparency and truth.’ </i></p></blockquote><p>For all its insights, it was a piece of work that never got the traction it warranted. Instead, BBC editors – and Directors General – continued to fling around the separate ingredients of John’s impartiality cocktail as if each was sufficient in and of itself.</p><p>Worse, the words ‘impartiality’, ‘objectivity’, ‘neutrality’ and ‘balance’ bounce round BBC newsrooms as if they’re interchangeable. </p><p>They’re not.</p><p>And the most damaging false equivalence of all is that between ‘impartiality’ and ‘balance’, a howler that’s guaranteed that, over the years, the BBC has got so much of its contentious coverage around its neck; climate change, the Iraq war, Brexit, immigration, Trumpism, the economy. Etc. </p><p>It’s not that hard to see why BBC editors reach for ‘balance’ when they’re challenged on ‘impartiality’. I know, I did it often enough in my twenty odd years as the editor of <i>PM, The World at One </i>and <i>Today</i> … though, in mitigation, I always knew it was an easy evasion, a cute body swerve. </p><p>Stop-watch balance and appearance counts are simple, quasi-objective ways of shooting down a complaint of partial coverage. But they tell no-one anything about whether or not that coverage was ‘impartial’.</p><p>Plus: ‘balance’ works upstream as well as down. To forestall complaints, editors inevitably spend time thinking how to ‘balance’ the sober conclusions of the carefully well-informed and tend to reach for their imagined opposite, especially if that opposite is loudly and emotionally articulated. Think MMR.</p><p>There’s no doubt that Faisal Islam and Simon Jack and their teams know who the charlatans are in any debate about political economy. Who to listen to and who, in any rational universe, should be ignored. Unquestionably they can sort the specious from the soundly based a mile off. But when it comes to what’s actually broadcast … ‘balance’.</p><p>After the BBC, I spent a few years teaching ethics to journalism students. Inevitably, ‘impartiality’ figured large. With all its ambiguities and practical challenges. </p><p>I used to use – with attribution – an anecdote that my old friend Allan Little would wheel out for those who thought ‘impartiality’ and ‘balance’ and ‘neutrality’ etc were interchangeable. </p><p>It was about a reporter telling the tale of a row between one man asserting ‘2+2=4’ and another insisting ‘2+2=5’. </p><p>The ‘neutral’ reporter would do no more than repeat the men’s respective claims as accurately as possible. The ‘balanced’ reporter would do much the same, making sure she gave equal time and equal emphasis to both.</p><p>(The ‘objective’ reporter, incidentally – the term most favoured by American media – couldn’t report a thing since choosing English as the reporting language and base 10 as the number system would both lack objectivity.)</p><p>The ‘impartial’ reporter, though, has two main options. Dismiss the whole thing: one of the claims is patently false so there’s no real dispute. Or report that the row’s taken place (it’s vaguely interesting after all) while pointing out that one of the men is demonstrably wrong.</p><p>And that’s the key element in the ‘impartiality’ cocktail. The one that always gets forgotten. Truth … and yes, I know, I know but let’s park that one for now.</p><p>‘Impartiality’, begins and ends with truth … or at least an aspiration to come as close to the truth as possible. It’s an active process that demands the journalist goes out – figuratively if not literally – to find and examine as much of the relevant evidence as possible. And to do so as open-mindedly as possible. Weigh significances. Dismiss falsenesses. Put outliers in context. </p><p>‘Balance’, on the other hand, is passive. It coquettishly pretends that there is no single truth. It’s content to ‘balance’ a truth with an untruth, pit evidence against emotion, place equal value on eyewitness and on spun deception. ‘Balance’ sublets the perception of significance and falseness to audiences. </p><p>So, it's quite right to assert, as Simon does, that there is a mindset in the BBC that tends to gives anti-vaxxers the same airtime as the CMO – or at least more of a hearing than their unreason deserves – or climate change deniers the same air-time as those who actually know what they’re talking about. But the root of it isn’t an ‘impartiality’ frame, it’s a ‘balance’ frame.</p><p>‘Impartiality’ isn’t part of the problem: it’s part of the answer – and not just to the shortcomings of the BBC’s fiscal reporting.</p><p>But here’s the thing: true ‘impartiality’ takes time, effort and application … something the generalists in BBC newsrooms just don’t have. Something they’re bound to have less of as the next round of cuts slices another layer off the corporation's capacities.</p><p>More: it takes courage. The confidence to say, Trussonomics wasn't just <i>arguably</i> crazy … it <i>was</i> crazy. Or that the Brexit Quitters’ campaign wasn’t <i>arguably</i> a lie … it <i>was</i> a lie. The strength to refuse to ‘balance’ truth with another lie. To take the inevitable flak from whichever gaggle of tinfoil hatters genuine ‘impartiality’ upsets. </p><p>For all sorts of reasons, some of which are understandable others not so much, the BBC of 2023 - unlike the BBC of the 1990s and 2000s - really doesn’t feel in a position to do any of that and reaches instead, for its good old friend ‘balance'.</p><p>There’s your second elephant. </p><p> </p><p><br /></p>Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-7720788458592458472016-07-07T10:14:00.001+00:002021-10-15T12:20:40.129+00:00Another small stone on the mountain<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>
I've hesitated before adding to the post-Chilcot comment mountain.<br />
But there are a couple of things that strike me - especially since I was fretting about Chilcot four years ago when I was writing <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stumbling-Over-Truth-Inside-Dossier-ebook/dp/B009L5BO5A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400227701&sr=8-1&keywords=stumbling+over+truth" target="_blank">Stumbling Over Truth</a></i>.<br />
There was the chance then that Chilcot would crash into my more modest volume.<br />
But that didn't happen. And I've wondered ever since whether Chilcot would answer the only question about Tony Blair and the Iraq war that we didn't have an answer to.<br />
Why?<br />
We've known the what ... and the how ... and, obviously, the when for a long time.<br />
But not the 'why'.<br />
<b>Answers?</b><br />
Has Chilcot answered that?<br />
Sort-of. Though in truth, Tony Blair's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-36727331" target="_blank">lengthy and emotional news conference</a> on Wednesday 7 July and his <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07j68xq" target="_blank">interview on BBC <i>Today</i></a> on Thursday 9 July did more to answer the question 'why' than the report itself.<br />
In both of those, but especially in his penitential news conference, the former Prime Minister showed with more clarity and emotional commentary what was in his mind as he strode to war.<br />
And reassuringly - for me, at least - confirmed something I'd concluded in my book.<br />
<b>Creating the 'truth'</b><br />
I've always rejected the simple formula that Tony Blair 'lied' to take the country to war - I explain it at length in the book.<br />
Put simply, you don't have to spend too long with all the evidence to realise that he didn't lie about Iraq in the strict sense of saying what he knew to be untrue with what lawyers call a <a href="http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/mens+rea" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">mens rea</a> - a guilty mind.<br />
No, it was something worse. The striking thing is that he sincerely believed that whatever it was he was thinking or saying at the time he was thinking or saying it was true.<br />
Worse still, he was - is still - adept at holding several contradictory truths at one and the same time.<br />
<b>Constrained</b><br />
That's worrying enough.<br />
But Sir John also confirms that No10 - not just the former Prime Minister but those within his inner circle, too - narrowed their range of policy options beyond what was wise and did so almost immediately after 9/11.<br />
He confirms, too, that as time went on, that range became ever more constrained. Which was why neither Tony Blair nor those close to him thought to challenge the meagre, patchy and suspect intelligence they had in front of them.<br />
And why they couldn't or wouldn't see the significance of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/feb/14/iraq.unitednations1" target="_blank">Hans Blix's report</a> in the winter of 2003, for example.<br />
As it happens, that narrow focus was even further straitened by the energetic No10 operation to 'create the truth' to get over key bumps in the political road - including <a href="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/wmd11.pdf" target="_blank">the mendacious September 2002</a> dossier and the <a href="https://fas.org/irp/world/iraq/uk0103.pdf" target="_blank">risible - aka 'dodgy' - January/February 2003 confection</a>.<br />
Putting a misleading script in front of a man who sincerely believes what he is saying at any one time is not a recipe for serious and considered policymaking.<br />
Especially if that man has already secretly sub-let British foreign and security policy to the White House. <br />
<b>Apologists </b><br />
And the 'truth creation goes on even now.<br />
In the 24 hours or so after Sir John reported, we saw a few nips and tucks intended to re-frame what he actually said.<br />
His report says the decision to go to war in Iraq was "based on flawed intelligence <i>and assessments</i>" (my italics).<br />
Listen carefully to the apologists for No10's conduct in 2002/3. And note how they tend to drop the words "and assessments".<br />
In other words ... "it was all MI6's fault - the intelligence was crap."<br />
Now, that's true - but then, intelligence often is crap. Or at best a bit smelly. That's why - <a href="http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2004/07/14/butler.pdf" target="_blank">as Lord Butler pointed out in his 2004 report</a> - no sane policymaker should ever take raw intelligence at face value.<br />
It's the assessment that matters - and that was done, effectively, in house; in No10.<br />
Flawed assessment of flawed intelligence isn't a great thing to put in front of a Prime Minister who believes whatever he is thinking and saying at any one time is the truth.<br />
The head of MI6 at the time, Richard Dearlove, met regularly with the Prime Minister and apparently scared him witless with raw intelligence. Intelligence the spy chief knew had multiple limitations.<br />
And the Chairman of the JIC, John Scarlett - the man who nominally 'owned' the intelligence - was more or less a lodger in Downing Street. Even the otherwise blandishing Hutton Inquiry found that No10 had "subconsciously influenced" him in his assessments.<br />
<b>Trusted voices</b><br />
The problem for the No10 apologists is that there were, as we know, trusted voices inside the intelligence community screaming that the intelligence was flawed. That it needed surrounding with - some thought suffocating with - trucksfull of caveats and cautions.<br />
Not just in publications such as the September dossier but in policymaking too.<br />
Those voices offered the very challenge that Sir John found lacking in Downing Street. But they weren't saying what Downing Street wanted to believe. And so, weren't so much ignored as not heard.<br />
<b>So ...</b><br />
Do we now know why?<br />
Probably.<br />
In his confessional news conference, Tony Blair more or less begged for our understanding and, perhaps, absolution.<br />
'I truly believed at the time what I was thinking and saying ... and though I was wrong, isn't the world a better place now, anyway' ... was the top and bottom of it.<br />
It's as mundane as that.Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-6807935170848823302015-09-25T09:50:00.000+00:002015-09-25T12:46:45.959+00:00Saturday 25 September 1915<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTIJ5uepchfdeyZoC3MNG550rTQSmFC8oj42HyPLBfpJ9mAx7hzm-bSfwMU3sWKGgugdz7tOik9oVPBqdCcpPngOqiZQR9hDVw36tHCfzita3tt20cOYjjvW6tfiYqOBX2it0YVjM5XRdz/s1600/Blog+Pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTIJ5uepchfdeyZoC3MNG550rTQSmFC8oj42HyPLBfpJ9mAx7hzm-bSfwMU3sWKGgugdz7tOik9oVPBqdCcpPngOqiZQR9hDVw36tHCfzita3tt20cOYjjvW6tfiYqOBX2it0YVjM5XRdz/s320/Blog+Pic.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>This is an extract from '</i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dust-Kevin-Marsh/dp/132613048X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434886926&sr=8-1&keywords=DUST+KEVIN+MARSH" target="_blank">Dust</a>'<i>. It is taken from the chapter entitled '</i>Saturday 25 September 1915'. </span><br />
<span class="s1">'<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dust-Kevin-Marsh/dp/132613048X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434886926&sr=8-1&keywords=DUST+KEVIN+MARSH" target="_blank">Dust</a>' <i>is the story of one young working class man, almost invisible to history, who died on the first morning of the Battle of Loos. Nothing of him was ever found. </i></span><br />
<i>One photograph and three hastily scribbled postcards written a few days before the battle are all we have to begin to tell his life.</i><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***<i> </i></div>
It is 5 am. </div>
<div class="p1">
The rain of the past two days, at times torrential, has eased to a thick drizzle. The earth is sodden. Water lies in pools in the pocks and tracks in the open land. It covers the bottom of the trenches. It is ankle deep. There is barely any wind. </div>
<div class="p1">
There is no silence. For almost 100 hours, British guns have tossed tons of high explosives and shrapnel onto German lines. Those lines are no more than 400 yards from where Lance Corporal James Airton is standing. Sitting. Leaning. Talking. Waiting. </div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
It is 5 am and no-one knows what is to happen next. </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Perhaps the first plan. Perhaps they will release thousands of tons of chlorine gas into the still, damp air. The ‘utility’. The ‘accessory’. Perhaps a five mile line of 60,000 men will rise as one out of the trenches to charge and slide and slip and fall in the dense clay. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">
</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Perhaps the other plan. There are two plans. Perhaps they will not let the gas go. Perhaps just 20,000 men will do what they can along a shortened line of two miles or so. Their flanks naked to the </span>German machine gunners. Knowing they cannot do what their orders say they must. </div>
<div class="p1">
It is 5 am and the biggest infantry battle in the history of Europe is perhaps an hour and a half away. Or perhaps it is not. Perhaps it will not happen at all. </div>
<div class="p1">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ5F0AoxF6a87bbN5jJd_ymhZftfcG1ZHsh_mUfwBe2mN0QNnOy7YGxXF9YDKujd89MJYbF_cJVBbM05i-Jczl25DfBOIFGGLYxfP1uV8kerwuYy-nnV3tadbwzmJc7ugnPcUiEmm4QnVT/s1600/JA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ5F0AoxF6a87bbN5jJd_ymhZftfcG1ZHsh_mUfwBe2mN0QNnOy7YGxXF9YDKujd89MJYbF_cJVBbM05i-Jczl25DfBOIFGGLYxfP1uV8kerwuYy-nnV3tadbwzmJc7ugnPcUiEmm4QnVT/s1600/JA.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lance Corporal James Airton, <br />
6th King's Own Scottish Borderers</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="s1">Jim and the rest of the 6th Battalion of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers have been back in the front line trenches for less than 24 hours. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It is 5 am. Now they are in the front line. Waiting. If they are to go, theirs will be the hardest task in this unwanted battle.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Jim and his battalion hold the section of trench that cuts the road from Vermelles to Auchy Les Mines. </span>Or what remains of them. A man foolish enough to peer over the parapet would look north east. Some 400 yards away, the German front line trench. The Madagascar Trench. </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Straight ahead, the battalion’s first obstacle and objective. ‘Mad Point’. A machine gun post that controls the Vermelles-Auchy road and stands in front of the remnants of Madagascar village, the Corons de Maroc and Corons de Pekin. Their exotic names belie their drab reality. Smashed shells of what were once rows of miners’ terraced houses. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">
</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">To their right, one of the strongest strongpoints of the German front. The Hohenzollern Redoubt. It bulges 600 yards from the German line. Its nose no more than 250 yards from the British line. It is a fortress with innards of steel and concrete driven onto and into a low slagheap that for all its modest height dominates the low, flat, sodden land around. Its surface a bristling skin of half buried machine guns. They have an uninterrupted, 270 degree field of fire. Behind them, a rash of trenches speed ammunition and reserves to the front. No-man’s land </span>here is “as nasty a bit of ground as any on the battlefield”.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It is 5 am and no-one knows what is to happen next. It depends on the wind. Partly on the wind. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Gas is a gamble. A grim game. An aetherial game of chance. Gas debilitates, demoralises and destroys. It destroys, burns and corrodes men and machines. But it can not be aimed. It is the caprice of nature that decides whether it kills, blinds or burns your own men or the enemy. The strength and direction of the wind. The only moment of human control is the moment of decision. Whether to open the taps or not. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It is 5 am. Jim waits. Waits for that decision and all that will follow.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Gas can not do all that artillery can. It can not uproot and cut the tangles of barbed wire that slow or halt an advancing soldier. That force each man into a high-stepping, macabre dance. That turn him into a standing target. Nor can it excavate the booby traps, the pits lined with spikes.</span></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<span class="s1">***</span></div>
</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<div class="p1" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="s1">It is 5.40. Haig persuades himself the wind is stronger. The leaves of a poplar tree whisper in the lightest of breezes. It is, he decides, ‘satisfactory’:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="s1"><i>“ … but what a risk I must run of gas blowing back upon our dense mass of troops” </i></span></blockquote>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="s1">At the northern end of the line, next to the La Bassée canal, facing Auchy les Mines, the air is still. </span></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="s1">One of the men whose job it is to release the gas hesitates. </span>Another man, a senior officer, hesitates, too. He wants to stop the release. He calls Divisional HQ. He tells General Horne:</div>
</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: left;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="s1"><i>“The wind is unfavourable and I don’t think I should release”, </i></span></blockquote>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Horne is firm:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="s1"><i>“The order is to turn on the gas”</i></span></blockquote>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The officer tells General Horne that the man whose job it is to turn on the tap is refusing to do it.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Hornes’ final words are curt: </span></div>
<span class="s1">
</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="s1"><i>“Then shoot the bastard”.</i></span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
*** </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It is 6.30 am. The noise is unbearable. However much we try we can not imagine it or anything like it today. The closest is an intense spell of sheet lightning but that is a pale, temporary imitation.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">There is the smell of wet earth. Of shit and rot and death. Of burnt explosives. Of smoke and gas. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
It is 6.30 am. Whistles blow. Along the five miles of the line. Their shrill soprano cuts through the basso profundo of both sides’ bombardments . The first of 60,000 men heave themselves, their half hundredweight packs, their rifles, wire cutters, spades and other kit over the parapets and out into no-man’s-land. <i></i></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It is 6.30 am. Pipe Major Robert Mackenzie hears the whistles. He waits in the centre of the Borderers’ trench. He is 60 years old. At least 60 years old. Perhaps more. No-one knows for sure. He is a legend. He breathes deeply and blows hard into his chanter. Once, Twice. Again. The drones wake. He rises with the first men. Steps over parapet and into the open. His fingers pick out the tune. Men pass him and stride towards Mad Point. He is hit. He plays. He is hit. He plays and walks until bullet after bullet smashes his legs from under him. The German machine gunners are aiming at his pipes. He stops. He can go no further. He is dragged back.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Pipe Major McKenzie’s wounds will kill him. He will be awarded the Victoria Cross.</span></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<span class="s1">***</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The laconic battalion diary records those first moments like this:</span></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="s1">
</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="s1"><i>“Battalion assaulted German trenches at MAD POINT & SE of MADAGASCAR trench at 6.30 am. The position was reached and at some points entered. Severe machine gun fire chiefly from flanks, undestroyed obstacles and uncertain effects of gas caused severe losses and prevented the attack from succeeding.”</i></span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
*** </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The wire and the booby trap are holding up the men. Those behind, those in the second wave, catch up. They are bunched now, close to the wire. The German machine guns at Strong Point open up. Conan Doyle described it like this:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="s1"><i>“Every accumulation of evil which can appall the stoutest heart was heaped upon this brigade … the gas hung thickly about the trenches, and all the troops … suffered from it … The chief cause of the slaughter, however, was the uncut wire, which held up the brigade while the German rifle and machine-gun fire shot them down in heaps.”</i></span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Some struggle back to their trenches. A handful. Nine officers remain of the 29 who began the day. Of the men, some 300 still stand of the 924 who stood-to just before dawn. Lance Corporal James </span>Airton is not among those still standing. He is one of the 630 men killed, wounded, gassed or missing.<br />
It begins to rain. Heavy rain.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div class="p1">
There are no words. Or if there are, they are few.</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Captain Stair Gillon, an officer of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, had these a dozen years after that morning’s slaughter. </span></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="s1"><i>“It was all over in a few minutes. The wonderful product of months of zeal, energy, and patriotism was ‘knocked out’ without opportunity of doing more than set an example to posterity by their bravery.”</i></span></blockquote>
</div>
Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-56939675532597846952014-05-16T14:34:00.000+00:002016-07-07T08:17:22.325+00:00Are we nearly there yet ...?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stumbling-Over-Truth-Inside-Dossier-ebook/dp/B009L5BO5A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400227701&sr=8-1&keywords=stumbling+over+truth" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3aSazEkYKEBiGcN84PBAYMaUK4izfskeD6H6eleVbStuWjTuRH6147yjL30uZEMJpJcQUwUSBoNGXrkYQKrcC5si5dAX5J183UrWTsFdHNWNedFtaZ28dlb8oBQyoyEGG7IYme_0HGDw9/s1600/BookPhoto.jpeg" width="211" /></a></div>
Four years late - that's quite an achievement.<br />
But that's how long overdue the <a href="http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/" target="_blank">Chilcot report</a> is <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27434594" target="_blank">according to Bernard Jenkin, chairman of the Public Administration Select Committee</a>.<br />
And the thing that's holding it up is the only thing that matters now. The answer to the question 'why?'<br />
We've known 'what' and 'how' for a long time. And the Chilcot panel's often idiosyncratic questioning hasn't, in all truth, added very much to either. Partly because when you read the witnesses' testimony, you find yourself marvelling at the patina that betrays years of burnishing between events and inquiry.<br />
Two years ago, I was fretting over Chilcot. I was writing <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stumbling-Over-Truth-Inside-Dossier-ebook/dp/B009L5BO5A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400227701&sr=8-1&keywords=stumbling+over+truth" target="_blank">Stumbling Over Truth</a>. </i>As the cover helpfully tells you, 'the inside story of the sexed-up dossier, Hutton and the BBC'.<br />
And there was the strong expectation then that Chilcot would report a few weeks after my book was due to be published on the 10th anniversary of the September dossier.<br />
That could have been bad news. Not because it would undermine the book but because it would - might - answer the question neither I or anyone else could at that time. 'Why?'<br />
For all the mountain range of evidence that was out there thanks to leaks and the FOI Act, no-one on the outside knew what Tony Blair and George Bush had said or written to each other in private. What, if any, secret understandings or agreements they'd come to.<br />
And the risk to the book was that I'd made it clear that I didn't believe the evidence was there to do what many did. Call Tony Blair a "liar".<br />
<b>Guilty mind</b><br />
I couldn't see any evidence of what lawyers call a <a href="http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/mens+rea" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">mens rea</a><i> -</i> for the simple reason that I concluded he truly believed whatever he was saying at the time he was saying it. Even if that meant holding incompatible or even contradictory views at one and the same time.<br />
That doesn't let the former Prime Minister off the hook, however. We know the lengths he and Downing Street went to to 'create the truth'. How those around him nipped and tucked intelligence to make it fit the policy. And how any warning - however authoritative - that he was wrong about Saddam's WMD went into the bin.<br />
<b>New inferences</b> <br />
Two years on and its hard not to make new inferences.<br />
As reported, it's those private messages and, possibly, agreements between PM and President that's holding up Chilcot and has been for some time.<br />
And that's the thing. The longer Chilcot is delayed - and yet again today, we're promised he'll report 'by the end of the year' aka 'not until the end of the year' - the harder it is to avoid the conclusion that those private messages tend to suggest Tony Blair's <i>mens </i>might have been <i>rea </i>after all<i>.</i><br />
That the 2002/3 exercise in 'creating the truth' wasn't just another example of the cynical and contemptuous way New Labour did its politics day in, day out for a decade. That it was something much more sinister. <i> </i><br />
Another seven months of mandarinisation will only persuade us that Chilcot, when he finally reports, has hidden more than he's revealed.<br />
And the test is whether he produces an answer to that question, 'why?'Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-2919143668987674422014-03-07T09:41:00.000+00:002014-03-07T09:41:54.728+00:00What's this 'channel' thing anyway?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUmQCaAVykssrV4gBIxKgi9202Gj2tsjrAEMvk72fspXnsfTiRS5qQQLGYhCSPy45VMdMY88i89ufVsMSI0OGw6QwMVcAvAwtEzQM5kJTd310GnyWPeT41xs-Om55foFqaEmpzkR7fRWHS/s1600/BBC3-009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUmQCaAVykssrV4gBIxKgi9202Gj2tsjrAEMvk72fspXnsfTiRS5qQQLGYhCSPy45VMdMY88i89ufVsMSI0OGw6QwMVcAvAwtEzQM5kJTd310GnyWPeT41xs-Om55foFqaEmpzkR7fRWHS/s1600/BBC3-009.jpg" height="192" width="320" /></a></div>
That decision to shift BBC3 to iPlayer is one of the most important DG Tony Hall has made.<br />
Possibly, the most important he'll make in his time at the top of the BBC.<br />
Why? After all, BBC3 is a niche channel - though, according to BARB's February figures, <a href="http://www.barb.co.uk/viewing/weekly-total-viewing-summary" target="_blank">it's no small niche, outperforming Sky 1 for example</a>.<br />
Nor is it especially cheap - an all-up cost of around £120m. Slightly less than the cost of all Local Radio.<br />
It's had question marks over it since its launch 11 years ago. Some were justified - should the BBC really be commissioning programmes called <i><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/organgrinder/2007/apr/10/whatshoulddannycohendowit" target="_blank">'F*ck off, I'm fat/ginger/a hairy woman'</a> </i>many of us wondered. And what about those <i>Eastenders </i>repeats? Did 16-35 year olds really not watch the soap first time round on BBC1?<br />
It was easy for the BBC's many detractors to dismiss it as Auntie's metro-yuff g-string. A 'look-at-me' come charter renewal.<br />
So why's it such an important decision? Who cares whether yuff have to watch the shows they want on their iPads? When they want? How they want?<br />
<b>Pipes and stuff</b><br />
It's important because it's the the first sizeable wedge the BBC has driven into the whole idea of 'channels'.<br />
That decision a while ago to put some content on iPlayer before it went out on the 'telly' was a tentative tap on the same wedge. So was the, frankly, amazing <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/2012/" target="_blank">Olympics service</a>.<br />
But moving a whole channel is the first big hammer blow. It won't be the last.<br />
Tony Hall knows - and it's something the BBC has been saying to itself and to anyone who cared to listen for over two decades - that the corporation's value lies in its content, the stuff it makes, the stuff it commissions and the stuff it chooses to buy. Not in 'channels'.<br />
Now it's true that most of us still watch our programmes live and on a 'channel'. But fewer of us and fewer of them. And the trend is in one direction only.<br />
<b>Who are you?</b><br />
Channels made sense when there was only a handful. When we were schedulers' more or less happy prisoners. Viewers in my generation part-identified themselves by the channel their family watched most on the single TV set in their home.<br />
Were you <i>Blue Peter </i>or <i>Magpie? Grandstand </i>or <i>World of Sport? </i><br />
And when BBC2 came along, did you tweak your set to watch it or, like my parents, not bother because it wasn't "for people like us".<br />
We still see vestiges of this kind of thinking now. The debate over Scandidramas - should <i>The Bridge </i>and <i>The Killing </i>have been on BBC2 or BBC4? Or those angry blasts in the TV pages during the 2012 Olympics that this or that event - usually where a Brit was heading for a medal - should have been switched to BBC1.<br />
Yet it's hard to see what it is about <i>Line of Duty </i>that makes it obviously BBC2 and what it is about <i>Shetland </i>that makes it equally obviously BBC1. Nor where the dividing line comes between BBC2 and BBC4 commissions.<br />
But then, these questions only matter if you believe 'channels' do.<br />
<b>In and out of the box</b><br />
If there's anyone still alive who turns the TV onto "their" channel at six-thirty and watches it and only it 'til bedtime, they're very few in number and more likely to be my generation than younger.<br />
As it happens, I've seen most of the BBC3 landmark programmes - <i>Gavin and Stacey, Boosh, Good News </i>etc etc ... but not one of them as they went out live on that channel. Nor the first time around.<br />
The length of a programme's tail is key these days and where/when you watch is as important as you want to make it.<br />
And we're more and more used to vertical viewing - binging on box sets. That's how I watched <i>West Wing </i>and <i>Family Guy. </i>I'm still watching <i>House of Cards </i>via Netflix - a box set by other means. And recorded the Scandidramas and watched them on successive days not successive weeks - a kind of home made box set. Oh, and it annoys the hell out of me that I'm having to defer to the BBC2 scheduler and wait seven days for the next episode of <i>Line of Duty.</i><br />
But that's me.<br />
The point is, though, we all have increasingly personal viewing habits which are an increasingly poor fit with the idea of the traditional 'channel'.<br />
<b>Test</b><br />
The BBC3 move came earlier than Tony Hall would have liked. And under pressure to save yet another £100m or so ... which, incidentally, the move will not do.<br />
But it's not a move he was reluctant to make in principle. Nor, if it's well managed, will it be the last.<br />
It makes sense to tackle BBC3 first. The target audience is the one that's already most adjusted to multiple devices. The one that's most likely to be able to navigate different ways of finding the content it wants. And, of course, the one that'll grow up with those new habits as second nature.<br />
The language, though, is limiting.<br />
Inevitably, it's a 'channel' being downgraded to 'online'. Auntie abandoning its kids. And that leads inevitably to the fear that none of the type of content made and bought for BBC3 will now see the light of day.<br />
Tony Hall knows that if that happens it will be a disaster. Not just for the lost talent - which is a loss of quality by other means - but because it would sink or at least delay and make more hazardous the corporation's medium-term strategy.<br />
It's vital the new BBC3's commissioning and buying is a success and is seen to be a success - and that means holding onto the channel's identity as a fast-track to the mainstream for new talent with new ideas.<br />
Numbers will matter too. And that's why getting iPlayer audiences measured properly and in a way that can be compared sensibly with traditional viewing is so important.<br />
<b>Time</b><br />
It's not impossible to foresee a time when an iPlayer like 'homepage' will be the main route into BBC programmes and content. If you've never seen <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/" target="_blank">the current iPlayer landing page</a>, it's worth a visit to look at the possibilities. And, incidentally, where the 'channels' are positioned on that page.<br />
It doesn't take much imagination to see that there are many, many more ways of bundling programmes and other content together than a handful of 'channels' none of which is as defining as some would like to argue.<br />
And in those bundles, whether and when a programme or a series or whatever went out for the first time on TV will matter not at all.<br />
That's where the BBC has to go. Whether it will be able to at its own pace and in its own way depends on that BBC3 wedge.<br />
Whether it opens up the possibilities Tony Hall hopes. Or cracks the whole bloody edifice.Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-72929929950401126422013-11-21T11:04:00.000+00:002013-11-21T11:04:38.026+00:00The wrong people in the room?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg55RLeN1eMz55SmTYjejQR4020TdfnGy-RiPCGUqcCSRR8u7SBsAr5wiZXYXfdaN0vWWbKnLuy4yq6IyhlJ9hnx5oBoiwyjqSXNn8oEnjqEDYgV27s6Yv-8ZJpOlSCqUkAoWN1tP9vrXSi/s1600/BlairSoldiers.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg55RLeN1eMz55SmTYjejQR4020TdfnGy-RiPCGUqcCSRR8u7SBsAr5wiZXYXfdaN0vWWbKnLuy4yq6IyhlJ9hnx5oBoiwyjqSXNn8oEnjqEDYgV27s6Yv-8ZJpOlSCqUkAoWN1tP9vrXSi/s1600/BlairSoldiers.gif" /></a></div>
This <a href="http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/International%20Security/chr_deWaal1113.pdf" target="_blank">Chatham House paper by James de Waal</a> published today, 21 November, is worth reading. And thinking about.<br />
DeWaal is no lightweight - he's a visiting fellow at the <a href="http://www.chathamhouse.org/" target="_blank">RIIA</a> and has a distinguished background in the MoD and the Diplomatic Service. His short paper is a study not of the political decisions to get involved in Afghanistan and Iraq – we know that the first of those was <a href="http://storycurve.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/an-unexamined-war.html" target="_blank">spasm</a>, the second <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stumbling-Over-Truth-Dossier-ebook/dp/B009L5BO5A/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377855853&sr=1-1&keywords=stumbling+over+truth" target="_blank">a deception</a> – but how the Blair government managed to make such a Horlicks of military deployments both during and in the long years after the conflicts.<br />
At its most political, it condemns Tony Blair’s Downing Street and its ‘sofa government’:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“Blair’s tenure as prime minister was noted for the practice of decision-making in small circles of selected (and therefore supposedly tight-lipped) advisers – an approach condemned by, among others, the Butler Review of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.” </i></blockquote>
A style that Blair’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, defended as a system that produced good decisions so long as you had “the right people in the room” - from which deWaal takes his title.<br />
<b>Obsession</b><br />
The problem was, de Waal argues, that “the right people” didn’t have quite the right attitude to managing the military:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“Politicians and civil servants did not wish to be accused of interfering with military planning, and so did little to ensure that military action supported political aims.” </i></blockquote>
And Downing Street’s infamous obsession with the next day’s headlines led to astonishing recklessness:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“In 2002–03, Britain decided to make a ground force contribution to the invasion of Iraq …" </i></blockquote>
That’s to say, the decision on the <i>type </i>of intervention, ‘boots on the ground’ not the decision <i>per se</i> to oust Saddam by military force – that had already been taken on the false premise we now know it to have been:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i> “… with implicit responsibility for post-war security in that country’s southern provinces, primarily because politicians feared they would have problems with the British army if it was left out, and that these problems would find their way into the media.” </i></blockquote>
Later, in another part of the forest:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“In 2009, Downing Street was not convinced of the military need to send reinforcements to Afghanistan, but agreed to do so because it wanted to prevent hostile press briefings by the military.”</i></blockquote>
The explanation? Well, the obvious. But also the …<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i> “incoherence, inconsistency and opacity …” </i></blockquote>
… of Downing Street’s “model” for working with the military. No10 was:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“apprehensive of the close relationship between the armed forces and the media, and were therefore reluctant to challenge military opinion.” </i></blockquote>
And as a result, did nothing at all to query the plans of those senior officers who:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“felt their role was principally to support the institutional interests of their branch of the armed forces.”</i></blockquote>
<b>"Poor judgment"</b><br />
De Waal’s main focus isn’t to explain, condemn or excuse political decisions - though some Blair apologists read it as such. That's odd. In measured language - ever the diplomat, perhaps - his judgment is scathing:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“It seems reasonable to accuse Blair of poor judgment – at the very least – in overestimating both the threat from Saddam Hussein’s regime and the prospects of installing a viable replacement in Iraq.” </i></blockquote>
And he recalls the admission of political misjudgment that S<a href="http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/44187/20100120pm-omand-final.pdf" target="_blank">ir David Omand shared with the Chilcot</a> inquiry. The admission that the immediate pre-war political strategy failed catastrophically in the case of Iraq:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“He cited the chess concept of </i>Zugzwang<i>, ‘where you force your opponent into a position where they have to move and every move they can make will worsen their position’, and showed how ‘instead of putting Saddam in that position, we turned out to be in that position ourselves because we were forced to […] get the [UN] inspectors to look for the smoking gun in double quick time before the window for invasion closed’.”</i> </blockquote>
Makes you wonder how serious the UN/weapons inspectors’ route really was – and how much Blair was, contrary to his assertions at the time, wholly governed by the military timetable.<br />
<b>Code</b><br />
De Waal ends recommending a new code to circumscribe governments’ decision making on the use of force – not a bad idea since that decision, peace or war, is the most grave a democratic government can take.<br />
And the code’s aim - he suggests it should be approved by parliament - wouldn't be to constrain a government's proper and legal use of force. It would be to ensure that political and military decisions were aligned and supported each other - as they self-evidently did not in the first decade of this century.<br />
He draws on the American model where:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“the stronger tradition of political-military debate and a clear legislative framework give the United States assets in this area that are not yet available to the United Kingdom.”</i></blockquote>
Like I say. Worth reading - the paper itself, that is, and not the gloss Tony Blair's apologists would like to put on it.Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-67513702570753964922013-09-08T19:32:00.000+00:002013-09-08T19:32:04.397+00:00Choose your mammal<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS5JioBSdqGUTd3CKrObcmk3tkCoeHZyn7CsXlvkBuT6b9nNxZA1xsCY3fJnWgbXbthwN3AOiaKl7NDv-_6VMXD24WBEcr5rEEJ-9-6WSwa0iA8_w-gFEpeLksWY-Cs1zeWHaPWyodLq1t/s1600/Ferret.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS5JioBSdqGUTd3CKrObcmk3tkCoeHZyn7CsXlvkBuT6b9nNxZA1xsCY3fJnWgbXbthwN3AOiaKl7NDv-_6VMXD24WBEcr5rEEJ-9-6WSwa0iA8_w-gFEpeLksWY-Cs1zeWHaPWyodLq1t/s1600/Ferret.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rat or ferret - you choose</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/sep/06/bbc-ordered-disclose-managers-payoffs" target="_blank">letter I got</a> on
Friday. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t know because a few days before I left the BBC back in March 2011,
I signed a confidentiality agreement. And I've no intention of breaching it. Here or anywhere else.<br />
Funny how things turn out, though. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What I think I<i> can</i> say is that none of the former
BBC colleagues I’ve spoken to in the past 48 hours is prepared to agree to the details of his
or her severance package being passed on to the MPs on the Public
Accounts Committee.<br />
"Why are we being dragged into this?" one said.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s talk of lawyers, actions for breach of confidence and
judicial reviews.<br />
The whole BBC pay-off story has been bloody. And whether your preferred mammal-in-a-sack is <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/10292461/BBC-pay-scandal-Lord-Patten-given-chapter-and-verse-about-pay-off-policy.html" target="_blank">rat</a> or <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/427494/BBC-pay-offs-scandal-chiefs-fight-like-ferrets-over-golden-goodbyes" target="_blank">ferret</a>
…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>expect it to get bloodier.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Buried rot</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s not entirely clear why the MPs want name, rank and
numbers of the 150 or so ‘senior managers’ who took redundancy or some other
form of severance between 2010 and 2012. "Surely anonymous data will do the job" one former 'senior manager' told me. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But perhaps they believe that the <a href="http://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/10193-001_BBC_BOOK.pdf" target="_blank">National Audit Office report</a>
and their own inquiries back in July revealed only the tip of some vast rot, buried deep in the corporation. And that a bit of naming and shaming is now in order.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Certainly the BBC’s performance at the committee can’t have
given them confidence that public money had been carefully and judiciously
spent.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The niff of something not quite wholesome is there in that <a href="http://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/10193-001_BBC_BOOK.pdf" target="_blank">NAO report</a>. They
looked at a sample of 60 deals between December 2009 and December 2010. And their inquiries threw up any number of anomalies in the severance deals of a handful of
executives on stratospheric salaries.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Payments in lieu of notice … even when the executive worked
the notice period. Payments for unused leave … even though leave policy in the
BBC is ‘use it or lose it’. Discretionary payments and sweetheart deals. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Worse, rules had been broken; procedures hadn’t been followed;
paperwork wasn’t complete; deals were signed off in a way that left the BBC
unable to show that it had handled public money wisely.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“The BBC has breached its own policies on severance too often without
good reason. This has resulted in payments that have not served the best
interests of licence fee payers.</i> <i>Weak governance arrangements have led to
payments that exceeded contractual entitlements and put public trust at risk.</i> <i>The severance payments for senior BBC managers have, therefore, provided poor value
for money for licence fee payers.”</i></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It wouldn't be surprising, then, if MPs thought that was the story with all the BBC's redundancy and severance deals. Cronyism, snouts in
the trough etc etc. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They'd be wrong to think that. Here’s why. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Irony</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The phrases ‘senior managers’ and ‘executives’ don't quite mean what they seem. They conjure up ranks of pampered desk pilots on
annual salaries approaching sums that many licence-fee payers won’t earn in a
decade or more.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s way off the mark. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s true that during the 2000s, pay at the very top of the
BBC went crazy. And that craziness is at the heart of this severance row.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s not without irony, incidentally. The very people who were so
essential to the BBC in the early 2000s that they had to be attracted and
motivated by boggling amounts of cash became, by the second half of the decade,
among the most easily disposable. Though they had to be motivated once again by
boggling amounts of cash. This time to go away. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/former-newsnight-journalist-slams-bbc-2207386" target="_blank">As former Newsnight reporter Liz McKean told the Edinburgh TV festival</a>, those inflated salaries at the very
top of the BBC created an … </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“officer class … that seems to fly in the face of the principles of
public service broadcasting … the corporation has been treated as a get-rich
scheme …”</i></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But those crazy salaries never reached very far down the
corporation. And that created at the time something more than dismay in the BBC’s
production offices, regional stations and newsrooms.<br />
<b>Wide range</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘Senior managers’ in the BBC means a very wide range of
staff on a very wide range of salaries. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the apex, the five ‘executive directors’. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Below that, team leaders,
newsroom editors, programme editors and so on, all on two grades called SMS;
the higher, SMS1, the lower, SMS2. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the top end, heads of this and controllers of that on
those £300k, £400k salaries.<br />
At the other end, men and women at the BBC’s sharp
end – in charge of projects or putting programmes and news bulletins on air – often
on salaries around £60k-70k. Not shabby by any means. But not extravagant
riches either.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many of the 150 ‘senior managers’ whose details the PAC is
now demanding are in the latter category. Broadcasters with twenty or thirty years
experience, overseeing programmes or editing strands of the News Channel or TV and radio news bulletins with audiences of three
or four million. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And who, when they were told their jobs were closing, were
offered the minimum deal their contracts allowed: a month’s salary for every year of service, capped at
24 months; no payment in lieu of notice – many, I understand, were asked to
sign away the right even when they were expected to be out of the door within
days; no sweeteners, no cash for annual leave not taken years ago.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Fishing trips</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All the former colleagues I’ve spoken to have no complaint
about their severance deals. None went beyond their contractual entitlement. None feels hard done by, even in the light of those NAO revelations.<br />
None joined the BBC to get rich, either. But of course, a redundancy package of, say, £150k looks a
lot of money – even though it’s entirely within the rules for someone leaving on a
salary of £70k after twenty-five years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The tabloids will just go on fishing trips” a former
current affairs editor told me. “They’ll try to make us all look greedy
bastards.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One former news editor added another worry: “We don’t know how
they’re going to use this information … we know they’ll stitch
us up.” It wasn’t clear who the ‘they’ were in that sentence. “I thought all this was supposed to be confidential” he
went on.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Indeed so.<br />
<b>Big beasts</b><br />
Something else, though, something rather more important sticks in the craw of many former colleagues - including those who are still working for the corporation.<br />
That <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/sep/08/bbc-is-in-the-dock" target="_blank">the cage-fight to the death between former DG Mark Thompson and Trust chairman Lord Patten</a> is yet another gift to those who just don't get public service let alone public service broadcasting.<br />
Precisely who knew what and when about a handful of extravagant pay-offs is slightly beside the point. What really matters is that they could happen at all. That, for a few years, a culture and mindset existed at the very top that thought it was OK.<br />
Former colleagues, including those who've found their current salaries and future prospects capped by the current DG Tony Hall, welcome the way he's rooting out that culture and mindset. And want him to continue. Clearing up the mistakes of the past, like the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/24/bbc-digital-media-initiative-failure" target="_blank">DMI fiasco</a>. Trying to lead the BBC back to the public service values it aspired to before misguided voices persuaded it to look more like a business ... with executive pay and boardroom habits to match.<br />
It's turning out to be a dirty business - <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/sep/06/bbc-director-general-pension-payment" target="_blank">some of the dirt splashing over Hall himself</a>. It'll no doubt get muckier. <br />
But one thing matters more than anything else. Once this is over, Hall is left to finish what he started.</div>
Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-1836600349217892062013-08-30T16:03:00.000+00:002013-08-30T16:03:15.988+00:00The view from the hill of beans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7GJe4jWbSi33IRbfLKMUcRL_c_w_fY828Cq9xuu2djK9Re3A9cSxMngYXosmWg91yzOxvVpvG0WNe8Q3W4mfZvjGLRXrs83AsTkV5gseLmMzWB5YqkmqZWqU91cjW_e6qPg7xB4Kv8xFZ/s1600/RamBlog.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7GJe4jWbSi33IRbfLKMUcRL_c_w_fY828Cq9xuu2djK9Re3A9cSxMngYXosmWg91yzOxvVpvG0WNe8Q3W4mfZvjGLRXrs83AsTkV5gseLmMzWB5YqkmqZWqU91cjW_e6qPg7xB4Kv8xFZ/s1600/RamBlog.gif" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23898848" target="_blank">That vote in parliament</a> looked very different from where I was. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Just a few hour’s drive from Damascus. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Not that it’s a drive I was thinking of. Not that it’s possible. Not overtly, anyway. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Not without a tank. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I guess if I’d been back in the editor’s chair at <i>The World at One</i> or <i>Today</i>, I’d have been bouncing around like everyone else at the British parliamentary manoeuverings. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The microscopic points scored. The tactical blunders. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And that laziest of lazy journalistic tropes; who’s won? Who’s lost?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">all seemed a bit irrelevant. A bit beside the point.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And t</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">he problems of three little people – Cameron, Clegg and Milliband – didn’t amount to a hill of beans … well, </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/quotes" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">you get the point</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Crazy world.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Selfish</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Before the vote, I was selfishly – really, really selfishly – hoping
nothing would happen in the real world that’d close the airport before I was due to leave for home. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Flicking
across the Hebrew and Arabic TV channels didn't help the mood. Pictures of gas mask queues. Missile batteries. Finger jabbing threats of retaliation ... in every possible direction. Fatah and Hamas united on this if nothing else - the west shouldn't attack Syria. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Crazy world, huh. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But then, the draw of our narrow, self-regarding politics is too strong if you’ve spent your life somewhere in its
vicinity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So I watched what I could of the debate. And shared the shock of the
vote. And got swept up in the calculations everyone I follow on Twitter was tweeting about.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">What does it mean for Cameron? For the coalition? For what passes these days for UK foreign policy?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">How did it happen? Where were the whips? What'll happen when Ed Milliband realises that smoke is coming from the self-administered holes in his feet? Etc. Etc.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hill of beans.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>No means no</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We learnt last night what our MPs<i> aren’t </i>prepared to do about Assad. And by extension, it has to be assumed, any other dictator who can't find his moral compass under the barrels of sarin.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So what <i>are </i>they prepared to do? Now and in the future. And if, as the polls suggest, they're more or less speaking for us voters, what are <i>we </i>prepared to see done in our name.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It'd be profoundly depressing if last night's vote means we're heading down some amoral cul-de-sac. Traipsing behind little
Englanders, wringing our hands at inhumanity muttering ‘somebody should do something’. Like curtain twitchers who tut at the yobs on the corner, hoping someone will stop them before they pee in our garden and violate the gladioli. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But if we're not prepared to back the use of force. And still want to see a vaguely moral world ... what is it that we're prepared to commit to to bring it about?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Polluted</b> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s no doubt that Iraq and Afghanistan shifted our perspectives on the use of force.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
MPs let us be bundled into <a href="http://storycurve.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/an-unexamined-war.html" target="_blank">war in Afghanistan in 2001 without any serious examination</a>. Two years later, we trooped with more deliberation but more mendacity into Iraq. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are similarities, of course, between then and now. But the differences are much greater. And tell us much, much more.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If Afghanistan was instinctive – ‘something must be done’ ‘what?’
‘dunno but let’s do it’ – Iraq was not. Blair had a <a href="http://downingstreetmemo.com/iraqoptions.html" target="_blank">roadmap</a>. A detailed one. Written in Downing
Street in March 2002. If you care to, you can even trace his Iraq trajectory back to<a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/jan-june99/blair_doctrine4-23.html" target="_blank"> Chicago in 1999</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cameron had/has no road map. If he has a foreign policy at
all, it’s difficult to spot. And on Syria, his lack of both tactics and strategy
has been painful to watch. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stumbling-Over-Truth-Dossier-ebook/dp/B009L5BO5A/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377855853&sr=1-1&keywords=stumbling+over+truth" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHuRl2Vbsd58khIjxMbdj2Wdo6XGm_oA22sA9hY-H3bpcbhUcODFwr5LTLIct4IBjYwkmmQJRb9h5b1qSoYf7D_IcaPEZEa7G7SLQJ5kOyCcbUnxf_obz7-f5GU97hZ9XIDuYja16p92F6/s200/BookPhoto.jpeg" title="" width="131" /></a>Blair’s convictions, of course, took us down another route.
And to another difference between then and now.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stumbling-Over-Truth-Dossier-ebook/dp/B009L5BO5A/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377855853&sr=1-1&keywords=stumbling+over+truth" target="_blank">We now know beyond any doubt</a> that in 2002/3, intelligence that was known to be unreliable and which turned
out to be pure fiction was massaged in Downing Street to remove doubt. To match
Blair’s convictions and shape a misleading case for war in the shaming
September 2002 dossier. Policy-based evidence.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This time, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/235094/Jp_115_JD_PM_Syria_Reported_Chemical_Weapon_Use_with_annex.pdf" target="_blank">the JIC’s reasoning, doubts and uncertainties have been published intact</a> – or at least sufficiently intact to make John Day’s
document a very different one from John Scarlett’s. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, while the spooks can come to conclusions about Assad’s use of lethal
chemical weapons over the past 18 months … <o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“<i>with the highest possible level of certainty …” <o:p></o:p></i></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
… when it comes to the 21 August, the potential trigger for military
intervention: <o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“... we do not have the same degree of confidence."</i></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And the conclusion that Assad was responsible, as he almost
certainly was? Well, the document concedes it's derived not from hard intelligence but from
retroductive reasoning – ‘we’ve looked for evidence of the alternative, that it
was a fake or the Syrian Armed Opposition, but can’t find any’. That, and a:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“<b>limited</b></i> <i>but growing body of intelligence which
supports the judgement that the regime was responsible for the attacks”.
(emphasis added)<o:p></o:p></i></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This time;<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“the JIC concluded that it is <b>highly
likely</b> that the regime was responsible for the CW attacks on 21 August”
(emphasis added)</i></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB254/doc05.pdf" target="_blank">But in 2003/3 we read</a>:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“Saddam Hussein <b>is continuing to
develop WMD</b> … the assessed intelligence has <b>established beyond doubt </b>… the threat is <b>serious and current</b> … ”</i></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, the intelligence had done no such thing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Perhaps it was the frankness this time round, those concessions of doubt
that Cameron echoed in the House – another sharp contrast with 2002/3 – that guaranteed
the government’s defeat.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps Blair was right. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps we can only be taken to war in a spasm or on the back of an 'interesting' approach to creating the truth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Long Haul</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Whether you support(ed) or oppose(d) Britain's participation in punishing Assad, it was/is impossible to see how it could end well. Impossible even to see where or when it might end.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Possible, though, to see the global policemen ending up worse off than the crook. A prospect that remains even if - when - the </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">UN inspectors' report demonstrates Assad's crookery beyond peradventure. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Other options, though, are few - and require levels of commitment to the long haul that the bean-hill builders baulk at.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One is a decades-long project to create a solidly rule-based international settlement. A settlement that would create international institutions with the power and consensus to constrain and contain 'offenders' before they go critical. But we sigh at the thought, knowing that every 'internationalist' achievement since 1945 has seen its ideals trumped by power and self-interest.<br />
Perhaps, too, we need some sort of coherent re-statement of Britain's policy on its role in the global police force.<br />
Or perhaps we need to expect more from diplomacy. Perhaps that 'wait and see' setting needs attention for the 21st century.<br />
If for no other reason than to avoid the absurdity of P5 members facing each other down over the corpses of gassed children.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-52806680459744470442013-08-14T09:41:00.000+00:002013-08-14T17:55:54.423+00:00Thello goodbye<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibno7DMgHPH_eg4qQ8cqN0sfWBf9hQjjshk1XDQekjCKhVHw6Zhyk6KChyRNlIcwJlm-9pQUiK7caUgU6MGLRjW5x4MiPOUu8JylMwlZmQIqZyXWh9HwPxqgfUKh1kOBYS2o4nHpzTwzSB/s1600/ThelloIcon.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibno7DMgHPH_eg4qQ8cqN0sfWBf9hQjjshk1XDQekjCKhVHw6Zhyk6KChyRNlIcwJlm-9pQUiK7caUgU6MGLRjW5x4MiPOUu8JylMwlZmQIqZyXWh9HwPxqgfUKh1kOBYS2o4nHpzTwzSB/s1600/ThelloIcon.gif" /></a></div>
I was always in two minds about it.<br />
Going to Venice on the train. The overnight sleeper.<br />
For all sorts of unimportant reasons, it was pretty late in the day that we decided to spend a week or so in Venice at the beginning of August.<br />
A place we know well.<br />
A place that can’t be spoiled even by the billions of tourists shambling around San Marco and the Rialto in the impossible heat.<br />
We were going to be in France in July. And it seemed nuts to fly. And I didn't fancy the day-time train.<br />
So, the <a href="https://www.thello.com/?iLangID=3" target="_blank">Thello night sleeper</a> from Paris it was. Encouraged by <a href="http://www.seat61.com/" target="_blank">The Man in Seat Sixty-One.</a><br />
A thirteen hour rumble through the night. Via Dijon, the Simplon tunnel, Milan, Verona, Padua. A whiff of romance. Bed down in Paris. Wake up in Venice.<br />
Such a bad idea.<br />
<b>Pluses and minuses</b><br />
On the plus side, three-berth cabins were easy to book straight from the <a href="https://www.thello.com/?iLangID=3" target="_blank">Thello website</a>.<br />
And not too expensive … though at £100 per berth each way, it wasn’t that much cheaper than the most conveniently timed Paris/Venice flights. And more expensive than the red-eyes.<br />
And that’s about it. For the plus side.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1H4uLW27glv_tUBb-pLFDs5mJjPf3FbSE8O-j1kdnYGvco_iePW3hpWT8_1-mrQK6GAvacpD6Q5ECF01cTTvaPIftIE5i0n5pBoHcg24VjYLCNBfTZYJdwsT-KXSRE7SrjWhHMh2wQd5b/s1600/Vosges.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1H4uLW27glv_tUBb-pLFDs5mJjPf3FbSE8O-j1kdnYGvco_iePW3hpWT8_1-mrQK6GAvacpD6Q5ECF01cTTvaPIftIE5i0n5pBoHcg24VjYLCNBfTZYJdwsT-KXSRE7SrjWhHMh2wQd5b/s1600/Vosges.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Place des Vosges</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
That and the afternoon we got to spend in Paris (most of it acting the bourgeois in the gloriously splendid Place des Vosges) before setting off at eight o’clock.<br />
Well, that was the time we were supposed to set off.<br />
We got to the Gare Lyon at six. Time for a drink, Something to eat etc.<br />
Didn’t quite trust Thello’s boasts of <a href="https://www.thello.com/a-bord/Restauration/index.html" target="_blank">“a menu card to suit every budget”</a>.<br />
<b>Late and later</b><br />
Bad news.<br />
Up there on the departure board, the Venice train was showing a delay of one hour.<br />
Grumpy.<br />
An hour later, another hour’s delay clicked up. Two hours.<br />
An hour later, a third. Then a fourth. Then ‘indeterminate delay’.<br />
No one knew why. The staff in the Thello shop had all gone home. And the SNCF information desk denied all knowledge, responsibility or interest.<br />
There’d been <i>intemperies</i> on the Riviera, apparently. And that was causing delays. We weren’t going anywhere near the Riviera.<br />
And a train was stuck at Avignon. Not going that way either.<br />
The best anyone in a uniform could do was shrug about “the late arrival of equipment”. But our train had arrived at Gare Lyon at nine-thirty that morning and had been sitting in a siding outside the station since. It seemed hard to see how those misfortunes were anything to do with it.<br />
<b>Grim gare</b><br />
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to spend four and a half hours at the Gare Lyon as it closes down for the night.
It’s not a very nice place.<br />
Not at all.<br />
Apart from anything else, it’s in the middle of a major re-build right now. So things that should be there aren’t. And things that should work don’t.<br />
Like seats. And lavatories.<br />
Some things are unaffected, though. Like the slamming shutters on <i>Relay</i> and anywhere else selling food or drink on the dot of eight-thirty.<br />
I’ll never criticise an airport again.<br />
<b>Midnight comes and goes </b><br />
Thello runs two night trains. One to Rome, one to Venice.<br />
Both were delayed.<br />
Both, in the end, by over four hours.<br />
Both victims of something we underestimate at our peril.
The stubborn inflexibility of the French public servant.<br />
A man or woman who, with a following wind, can make the most cussed jobsworths of any other nation seem like <a href="http://www.bcdb.com/cartoon/2341-Good_Deed_Daily.html" target="_blank">Good Deed Daily</a>.<br />
Thello, you see, is a new(ish) venture. A private venture. The first to exploit ‘open access’ on the French railway system.<br />
Hence SNCF’s general lack of interest in it or us.<br />
Sure, it leases its engines in a complex arrangement involving SNCF. But otherwise it’s a thorn in the sprawling side of the state behemoth.<br />
And you can imagine what that means for the place it has in the heart of every SNCF <i>fonctionnaire</i>.<br />
Think Robert Maxwell running a couple of trains on pre-Beeching British Rail.<br />
<b>Shrugs all round</b><br />
So when things go wrong for SNCF – as they clearly had that day – SNCF is the priority. And if that means keeping platforms free for delayed SNCF trains and not finding one for those pesky private Thello trains for over four hours … **shrugs and makes that ‘muh’ sound**.<br />
But at least it can't get worse, can it? We think. As round about a quarter past midnight we drag ourselves on board.<br />
Obviously, our carriage is at the very far end of the platform.<br />
And it’s clear that it’s very, very old.
Between forty and fifty years old, it turns out.<br />
Thello – which, for the time being, is a consortium of Veolia (the people who take your rubbish away and run the bus and tram systems in many European cities) and Trenitalia – uses carriages originally built for the Wagon Lits company when Charles de Gaulle was President of France and England was yet to win the World Cup.<br />
They look like it.<br />
They might even be the very couchette carriages I traveled on back in 1969 on a school trip to Switzerland.<br />
I wouldn't be surprised to learn they hadn’t been cleaned since about then.<br />
Shabbiness, you can just about forgive. Decades of congealed cack in every corner is a tad harder to ‘understand’.<br />
<b>Expectations</b><br />
Of course, there’s no room in the cabins. Not for you and your luggage. You expect that.<br />
And you expect the bunks to be four inches shorter than you are.<br />
What you don’t expect is that the top bunk’s headroom – mine – is mere inches. A single digit’s worth of inches.<br />
Nor that, by some evil trick of circulation, all the hot air from the rest of the train ends up there.
Driven by the train’s ancient emphysemic ventilation system.<br />
Never mind. “We’ll have the morning to watch the Italian countryside drift by.”<br />
Not really. After Milan – we arrived there about the time we were supposed to be in Venice – we trundled along, stopping at every signal, deep in an embankment, hidden by trees or plastic wind shields or weaving through the industrial zones of Lombardy and Veneto.<br />
Breakfast was marred by an electrical failure in the buffet car. So they, apologetically, made the instant coffee with lukewarm water pumped from a flask.<br />
Oh. And the plumbing is … romantic. Best leave that there.<br />
<b>Way to go?</b><br />
Would I do it again?<br />
No. Obviously, no.<br />
As it turned out, the return journey left Venice and arrived in Paris on time.<br />
But the temperature on board was over 38 degrees. And up there on the torture bunk, sleeping wasn’t much of an option. Though the dehydration induced hallucinations were entertaining.<br />
Bluntly, this is not a way to go to and from Venice. At best, it's an adventure in masochism.<br />
If you're thinking about it, don't. Stop. Now.Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-53161047211709776022013-04-19T09:13:00.000+00:002013-04-19T09:13:56.506+00:00Can anyone help ... ?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijz__-JtaqRcj4OKvDUyr4Zu1_BS800bFYuVDqzlzPC1SoNS-vzCEqWO-AXch_GSwBaKnYMWPW2ZnuqQS9ZuNVtFk2zql_C45lllK_mvd_seZEKt5_OLEXu7haxFELKJv1K9wt69l6Rzt5/s1600/Ram.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijz__-JtaqRcj4OKvDUyr4Zu1_BS800bFYuVDqzlzPC1SoNS-vzCEqWO-AXch_GSwBaKnYMWPW2ZnuqQS9ZuNVtFk2zql_C45lllK_mvd_seZEKt5_OLEXu7haxFELKJv1K9wt69l6Rzt5/s1600/Ram.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The ubiquitous West Bank water butts</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I don't do conspiracies.<br />
But what's been happening to Google searches via Chrome on my trusty Macbook since I came back from Palestine a few weeks ago is genuinely puzzling.<br />
And I wonder if it, or anything like it, has happened to anyone else.<br />
<b>Relaxed in Ramallah</b><br />
Back at the end of March, just before Easter, I spent a while in Ramallah designing a new diploma and postgraduate course on Strategic Communications at Birzeit University.<br />
Ramallah is, incidentally, one of the most sophisticated and relaxed cities I've ever stayed in.<br />
Once I'd finished there, I spent Easter/Passover in Jerusalem ... and noticed that some of the internet "issues" I'd experienced in Palestine were still happening.<br />
Mostly, Google searches timing out. Or error messages telling me that websites - the site for the Ramallah hotel I'd stayed in, for instance - didn't exist, though I knew they did.<br />
I put it down to bad WiFi. Just one of those things.<br />
<b>But ...</b><br />
Back in London last night, I picked up some of the threads of the work I'd been doing in Palestine.<br />
I needed to search for Hanan Ashrawi, the veteran Palestinian spokesperson.<br />
So, on the Mac that had been with me on the trip and using Chrome, I put Hanan's second name into Google. And got this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj34Q4xe9MdUL209DldS7tzcH6mjXoQ3xWvQzfbzugu_O7alIKILrF_6J8EgTLjnhYkntQ4sFmPi7Vw2igT_EnkePn8rFu_zWSw4OrABR9CW7ODhU4ITxXSoUWZgPFLdRHeQ4xgSZ6dFUar/s1600/Pal3.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj34Q4xe9MdUL209DldS7tzcH6mjXoQ3xWvQzfbzugu_O7alIKILrF_6J8EgTLjnhYkntQ4sFmPi7Vw2igT_EnkePn8rFu_zWSw4OrABR9CW7ODhU4ITxXSoUWZgPFLdRHeQ4xgSZ6dFUar/s640/Pal3.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
OK ... glitch. Try "Palestine:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2LaR-iChGl_ooRfXSEtII1fnKHvTtX7WVCwnSWYnhXAIg2_Dt7qjZkiX6LxynaNrbJ_zNZGM6iEG0eA8VeR0BBrdcJ0tTm16ovAG4Bp33q8QnItZgDVreSTkkYagmu9HUMt5524d_scnh/s1600/Pal1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2LaR-iChGl_ooRfXSEtII1fnKHvTtX7WVCwnSWYnhXAIg2_Dt7qjZkiX6LxynaNrbJ_zNZGM6iEG0eA8VeR0BBrdcJ0tTm16ovAG4Bp33q8QnItZgDVreSTkkYagmu9HUMt5524d_scnh/s640/Pal1.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
Hmm ... I had a vague memory of 'stuff' like this happening in Ramallah and Jerusalem. OK ... try "Ramallah":<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitTsp5JsvrQwFERYJazyxq7Jmfa4NP3tXtMg6Iiw7C3NNMo9plP9f6QaNQ5Z6AaCa_H-G8udAD7JBY_IdlHtNunNzLUeV_i_aawN-b3TDv2KTSgJipx3N6LcRwdcrHlr_9zDLrn0Dxg-3B/s1600/Pal2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitTsp5JsvrQwFERYJazyxq7Jmfa4NP3tXtMg6Iiw7C3NNMo9plP9f6QaNQ5Z6AaCa_H-G8udAD7JBY_IdlHtNunNzLUeV_i_aawN-b3TDv2KTSgJipx3N6LcRwdcrHlr_9zDLrn0Dxg-3B/s640/Pal2.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Same for "Erekat", "Abbas", "Fatah", "Hamas", "Birzeit", "Gaza" and "intifada".<br />
Must be a broken browser ... so, to check, tried "Jerusalem":<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMnS6RSA-XzNynhDuN-ztNs6XxWR1bsQqc6UaQF7UXDVyBEPlhcn8uCi8fl7ljl1qBWPHbAzQiEVRny4n3cMy-TQBPErWVp5aMIwnalTPI39xxCfe_5De0VAwpqNbZz-jOFEE9axxk9ISR/s1600/Pal5.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMnS6RSA-XzNynhDuN-ztNs6XxWR1bsQqc6UaQF7UXDVyBEPlhcn8uCi8fl7ljl1qBWPHbAzQiEVRny4n3cMy-TQBPErWVp5aMIwnalTPI39xxCfe_5De0VAwpqNbZz-jOFEE9axxk9ISR/s640/Pal5.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
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Lucky shot. What about "Netanyahu":<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL2h5xE4zJ2I0IqevHQeF9TTrBXtyoxI_HcE5KAETcEKkMbLvOdUns_9FlibaAazXETv8P6C22JZoBuRzaBDkfXgOBymg4MDxARTSLxzrpuzWbEZ2R5lJQtZNW7rh10iOfBQN6fyLBvyLO/s1600/Pal6.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL2h5xE4zJ2I0IqevHQeF9TTrBXtyoxI_HcE5KAETcEKkMbLvOdUns_9FlibaAazXETv8P6C22JZoBuRzaBDkfXgOBymg4MDxARTSLxzrpuzWbEZ2R5lJQtZNW7rh10iOfBQN6fyLBvyLO/s640/Pal6.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
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Right. Must be working now. Glitch sorted.<br />
Except ... no. Still, Palestinian search terms gave no results and crashed Chrome.<br />
Switched to Safari and Firefox ... which both worked just fine. And Chrome working fine on my PC, using my Google account.<br />
<b>Odder and odder</b><br />
Oddly, "city of Ramallah" produced no browser crash and the usual hundreds of search results. Ditto "palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat".<br />
But still, even today (after numerous cache clears and that old standby 'turning it off and on again) the one or two word terms that crashed Chrome in Palestine and did so again last night are still, eventually, returning 'Page(s) unresponsive'.<br />
Like I say, I don't do conspiracies. I'm happy to believe this is all my fault and I'd done something weird.<br />
But two questions.<br />
Has anyone else had anything like this? And how can I fix it? Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-34981371716948220842013-03-09T14:06:00.000+00:002013-03-09T14:09:08.574+00:00Leopards and spots and stuff ...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ76mOqUSfxvviPD7NQDQVbQnYhEkRj8GYsb_T9xj_Ap59bVqHu8jwv5QpjlhRke7S5S3iOIwP0xB03udES1IncpqRV7KmxA-QQCJGQ0IqMkdH95PxlzWhYAPmsQh0XsJCmh-YUGJMWRfo/s1600/Leopard.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ76mOqUSfxvviPD7NQDQVbQnYhEkRj8GYsb_T9xj_Ap59bVqHu8jwv5QpjlhRke7S5S3iOIwP0xB03udES1IncpqRV7KmxA-QQCJGQ0IqMkdH95PxlzWhYAPmsQh0XsJCmh-YUGJMWRfo/s1600/Leopard.gif" /></a></div>
I don't follow Alastair Campbell (@campbellclaret - 214,999 followers) on Twitter.<br />
But the other day, a friend told me I'd (@kjmarsh - 2,040 followers) been mentioned in one of his tweets ... so naturally, curiosity got the better of discrimination.<br />
The last time I was aware of being on his radar was way back in 1997 and 1998.<br />
First, when he tried to poison the waters around a job - editor of <i>Today </i>- that I hadn't even applied for. And then, at various parliamentary lobby briefings when he railed against me and the programme I was editing at the time, <i>The World at One. </i><br />
You can read all about all of that in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stumbling-Over-Truth-sexed-up-dossier/dp/1849541523" target="_blank">Stumbling Over Truth</a>, </i>incidentally.<br />
Anyway, this time it was all about Nick Robinson's excellent <i><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01r0ghz/Battle_for_the_Airwaves_Episode_7/" target="_blank">Battle for the Airwaves</a> - </i>his short series on Radio Four about the scuffles between the BBC and governments over the past 90 years. The edition that looked at the row over the 'sexed up' September 2002 dossier, <i><a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB254/doc05.pdf" target="_blank">Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction</a> </i>(sic).<br />
Unsurprisingly, both Alastair Campbell and I featured in the programme. Unsurprisingly, too, our respective stances haven't changed much over the intervening decade.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1zR5GxruVmf-xoBihBX7p-7wNqbeIBsTX_jjPpoVARFhzBA2erEuYH3nKqRkkW_-15galYCOLkR34oEPhEGma2sScatCHu772MJ8_2teBso1onsbz_qPuKLoB6n5747D66n3KEfENm7cC/s1600/AC1.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1zR5GxruVmf-xoBihBX7p-7wNqbeIBsTX_jjPpoVARFhzBA2erEuYH3nKqRkkW_-15galYCOLkR34oEPhEGma2sScatCHu772MJ8_2teBso1onsbz_qPuKLoB6n5747D66n3KEfENm7cC/s1600/AC1.tiff" /></a>But I had to smile when I read his tweet. It's not just our respective stances that haven't changed.<br />
Campbell's uniquely polytropic verbal habits haven't, either.<br />
F'rinstance, he tells his followers that I called Andrew Gilligan "journalistically criminal" in the programme.<br />
<b>Old tricks</b><br />
That's not quite true. Though, unsurprisingly, it's close enough to confound all but the most attentive. An old trick. Leopards. Spots. Etc.<br />
What I actually said was that "to misquote" and "misattribute ... one of the key claims" of "a single, anonymous source" was "journalistically criminal".<br />
Gilligan's story, however, that Downing Street had "sexed up" the September 2002 dossier and that it made some in intelligence unhappy, was, as we now know for certain, wholly correct. Nothing criminal there ... well, not in putting the story on air.<br />
We now know for certain, too, the truth of Dr Kelly's central allegation; that the notorious 45 minute claim was included in the dossier even though the best analytical brains in the intelligence community had warned it was almost certainly wrong. A warning that was over-ruled using intelligence from an untested source. Intelligence that was subsequently withdrawn.<br />
Those brains were right and Downing Street was wrong ... unless I missed the haul of WMD finds from Saddam's "continuing" and "accelerating" production lines back in the day.<br />
The journalistic criminality was Gilligan failure to report Dr Kelly's allegations accurately in one broadcast out of some dozen and a half on that one day in May 2003. The allegations themselves, however, were true.<br />
As I wrote at the time, it was a case of "good journalism marred by flawed reporting".<br />
<b>In denial</b><br />
Someone who does follow @campbellclaret is Mike Anson (@MikeAnson). He tweeted a response that "what Gilligan alleged was essentially correct".<br />
Now, I've never been fond of that defence. As I said to Nick Robinson, "essentially correct" or "mostly right" isn't good enough. Not for the BBC and not when you have only a single, anonymous source.<br />
The fact is, though, that but for one idiotic moment, Gilligan did report Dr Kelly accurately. And had he had the nous to report the allegations as he'd set them out and worded them in the script he'd written a few hours earlier, as he was meant to, he'd have spared us that idiotic moment and much else besides.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgirSko_x30HQQCBZWGcWUPg0pTPTnY-JvTWF2g3nsp0giV4mQQmTNffhzbau-p4isY_4FJLxJ3QwjvMMe6tHN9DqhRfVqProVYybN2FZbAM2GhqtcLU7q6Ge9CY_0h2mczWx_DOFzBOfvt/s1600/AC3.jpg.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgirSko_x30HQQCBZWGcWUPg0pTPTnY-JvTWF2g3nsp0giV4mQQmTNffhzbau-p4isY_4FJLxJ3QwjvMMe6tHN9DqhRfVqProVYybN2FZbAM2GhqtcLU7q6Ge9CY_0h2mczWx_DOFzBOfvt/s1600/AC3.jpg.tiff" /></a>But Campbell remains in denial. "Wrong in every regard", he tweets.<br />
Every regard?<br />
Well, that's for others to judge. By and large those who care at all any more have made up their minds. Drilling down to what was actually said would bore even those with a PhD in Hutton Studies. And anyway, if you're minded to you can read it all in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stumbling-Over-Truth-sexed-up-dossier/dp/1849541523" target="_blank">Stumbling Over Truth</a></i>.<br />
Suffice it to say, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7GeKLE0x3s" target="_blank">while all of the words in @campbellclaret's tweet were used by someone at some point in the whole affair, it wasn't necessarily in that order, all at the same time or all by the same person</a>.<br />
Pedants note, for instance, the word "agencies".<br />
<b>Bizarre</b><br />
Most bizarre of all, though, is this little extract from the exchange with a politely persistent @MikeAnson.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4WLCBtdbX-pL2oPP-kHMk-fjaFVOY_atnwJYKnPsuaRgxwvYamhyphenhyphenul62DZYIPGOSjlKUIwqSjpSDVRQtQx-hMKtpvSRsG4lU5byrfTZUMzSmYarYkufJpxwrKuL2_yfoccn7strZfayoW/s1600/AC4.jpg.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4WLCBtdbX-pL2oPP-kHMk-fjaFVOY_atnwJYKnPsuaRgxwvYamhyphenhyphenul62DZYIPGOSjlKUIwqSjpSDVRQtQx-hMKtpvSRsG4lU5byrfTZUMzSmYarYkufJpxwrKuL2_yfoccn7strZfayoW/s1600/AC4.jpg.tiff" /></a>Mr Anson correctly reminds Alastair Campbell that Downing Street did "sex up" the case for war, the September 2002 dossier. Even Lord Hutton acknowledged that ... though you have to have a degree in interlinear reading to spot it. And so, of course, did Lord Butler ... rather more bluntly.<br />
Does @campbellclaret?<br />
Not quite.<br />
<b>Ten years late?</b><br />
One thing, though, I would agree on.<br />
It would have been better had I been able, ten years ago, to tell Lord Hutton how and why Gilligan had screwed up in one broadcast - but that his story was sound. The story I passed, the story written in his script, the story that time has shown to be spot on.<br />
Only Lord Hutton knows why he didn't feel he needed to hear from the programme editor who put the allegations on air. Only the BBC knows why it didn't shove me into the witness box - but if you care at all, you can read why I believe they felt it better to silence me <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stumbling-Over-Truth-sexed-up-dossier/dp/1849541523" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
It's baffling how @campbellclaret is still trying to persuade us, perhaps still believes himself, that if the BBC had apologised for the witless wording of one broadcast, it would have had to concede the story and Dr Kelly's allegations were wrong.<br />
That would never have happened. And if anyone still believes the 'sexed up' dossier allegations were wrong ... well, they really are "10yrs too late".Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-32050875907269033382013-02-05T18:26:00.001+00:002013-02-05T18:26:09.676+00:00Knots and nots<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxN_R3Axq_9FjtjS_A-pc9twO23UygTtr6EWyqSwWE01_7GhjSg1N5zQomUFLG6iyKwLtjaA4qpXOGIRoBmT0xzRGxermf2iehmTa6i_mrnnRzUWSSbuLBj8uiKHUIcm7nKDJEE7FfnnIT/s1600/Yoga.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxN_R3Axq_9FjtjS_A-pc9twO23UygTtr6EWyqSwWE01_7GhjSg1N5zQomUFLG6iyKwLtjaA4qpXOGIRoBmT0xzRGxermf2iehmTa6i_mrnnRzUWSSbuLBj8uiKHUIcm7nKDJEE7FfnnIT/s1600/Yoga.jpg" /></a></div>
When I added my signature to<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/30/greg-dyke-press-statutory-regulation" target="_blank"> a short letter to <i>The Times</i></a><i> </i>a while back, it was to make one very narrow, simple but important point in the post-Leveson debate.<br />
A debate that’s been absurdly protracted by the newspaper industry’s passive-aggressive foot-dragging. Promising us, the public, something Leveson-compliant while, somehow, never quite producing it.<br />
<b>Simple</b><br />
That very narrow, simple but important point was this: that there’s nothing in even the strictest form of media regulation, the regulation of broadcasting, that’s “inevitably anathema to free speech”.<br />
Nothing in that strictest of regulatory regimes that “automatically places us under the thumb of politicians”.<br />
Simple enough, huh?<br />
The point was to introduce a bit of reality to counter this particular diversion. Not to argue that broadcasting-style regulation should be extended to the press. Nor to put Ofcom in charge of our newspapers. No-one sane wants either.<br />
<b>Disappointment</b><br />
But that didn't stop some getting tangled in knots over it - and that was disappointing.<br />
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dv9hq" target="_blank">Steve Hewlett in his interview with Peter Kosminsky on <i>The Media Show</i></a>, for example. Or <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/feb/03/leveson-debate-tv-style-regulation" target="_blank">his piece in <i>The Guardian</i></a> – I tweeted, probably a tad harshly, that it was a “stonking exercise in missing the point”.<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/feb/03/after-hutton-broadcaster-claim-free" target="_blank">Peter Preston took a different tack in the <i>Observer</i></a> though he arrived at a similarly disappointing, nodular destination.<br />
He asked me whether I remembered the “catastrophe of Andrew Gilligan, David Kelly and the Hutton report” and the “Downing Street waves that lapped around (me)”. And whether Greg Dyke – who also signed the <i>Times</i> letter – “remembers the vote by the BBC governors – chaired then by a former chief whip – that swept him out of office?”<br />
<b>Book plug</b><br />
Simple answer. Yes – and you can read all about both in my book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stumbling-Over-Truth-sexed-up-dossier/dp/1849541523/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360078103&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Stumbling Over Truth</a></i>.<br />
But Peter's message was clear. Broadcasters are in "chains"; our journalism isn't somehow as "free"or, by implication, as 'good' as that of the press. Less good at holding power to account, calling its deceptions and standing up to its pressure.<br />
Proof, he goes on, is that when we rattle our chains, the seen and unseen hands of power clamp us tight again and show who's boss.<br />
It’s fantasy, of course. And, as we said in the letter, frankly insulting.<br />
<b>Waves</b><br />
But as a pedant, I'm kinda obliged to point out he's not got the before, during and after of the dossier row quite right. The facts don't serve his argument in the way he thinks.<br />
Those Downing Street waves (and before that, Millbank ripples) didn't lap around me only during the dossier business. They threatened daily to break over me and my programmes for a decade before Gilligan shambled on air on that May morning in 2003.<br />
Why? Because <i>The World at One </i>- the programme I was editing most of that time - made a point of shining a light day in, day out on New Labour's sleights of hand intended to “create the truth”.<br />
It meant endless bloody rows with Downing Street - and, naturally, they tried to put the squeeze on. But there was never a sniff of “back off” from my bosses. Nor so much as a raised eyebrow from our “regulators”, the BBC Governors in those days.<br />
All the suits took an interest in was whether our stories were well-founded, well-sourced and accurate. They were, we got on with it.<br />
<b>Dossiers and defenestration</b><br />
The 2003/4 dossier affair was no different - except for one thing.<br />
Gilligan's story was well-founded and well-sourced ... but in one broadcast, that notorious 6.07 two-way, it wasn't accurate. And it was that inaccuracy that let the sea in (to continue Peter’s wave metaphor) not the allegations themselves.<br />
As to Greg’s defenestration … well, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Greg-Dyke-Inside-Story/dp/0007193645/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1360078905&sr=1-1" target="_blank">he's spoken for himself on that</a>. Short version - it’s a bit simple minded to reduce it to Downing Street’s revenge or Governors second guessing what Downing Street wanted or expected and flexing regulatory muscles.<br />
<b>Chains</b><br />
Peter suggests it would be better if “lovers of editorial freedom” – like me, I suppose – “rattled the chains that tie them down rather than demanded more chains for everyone”.<br />
See above for my view on whether I was ever "chained".<br />
But the idea that I or anyone else who signed that <i>Times </i>letter did so to demand "chains" for everyone is bunk.<br />
<b>Canard</b><br />
Unsurprisingly, the old phone-hacking/MPs’ expenses canard waddles on stage, too ... though once again, Peter’s memory is slightly at fault.<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/nov/13/lord-patten-editors" target="_blank">Chris Patten didn’t quite tell the Society of Editors</a> at the back end of 2011 that the BBC “couldn't have broken either the MPs' expenses story or the phone-hacking scandal”.<br />
What he did say was that the BBC couldn't have “paid for the information on MPs' expenses<i> as the Daily Telegraph did</i>, nor pursued the hacking story at News International <i>as remorselessly as the Guardian campaign did</i>” (my emphasis).<br />
As it happens, I don’t think the good Lord is right on either count. I can’t think of anything in the BBC’s regulatory framework or editorial guidelines that would have stopped me pursuing phone-hacking back in the day if I or one of my reporters had got a sniff of it.<br />
Nor, if we'd got our facts right, can I imagine anyone of my then bosses trying to stop me.<br />
<b>Teeth</b><br />
And while it would undoubtedly have made for an interesting discussion in the higher echelons of BBC News, I’m not as certain as Lord P is that a whistleblower offering the MP's expenses data would have been turned peremptorily away. Certainly not if one of my former colleagues had been offered it and had really got his or her teeth into it.<br />
Sure, the BBC almost certainly wouldn't have handed over a six figure sized wad of the public’s cash just like that. But there are ways and ways and I don't find it impossible to imagine that one could have been found.<br />
Plus, there would have been little difficulty in a genuine <i>ex post facto</i> public interest justification - the acid test. <br />
<b>Called to account</b><br />
But in the end, tying the post-Leveson debate in these kinds of knot is all about trying to delay the inevitable.<br />
It won't.<br />
We know there's overwhelming public support for Leveson's proposals or something very close to them - not to "chain" the press nor impose broadcasting style regulation.<br />
But to do something very simple and very overdue.<br />
To place the last remaining unaccountable power in the land - the press - in the same position it insists on for all other powerful institutions.<br />
To make it accountable to the public.Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-62218208372316220822013-01-29T12:32:00.000+00:002013-01-29T12:32:03.326+00:00An Unexamined War<br />
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<i>It's difficult not to draw easy parallels between the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21240676" target="_blank">drift to serious involvement in Mali</a> and the stampede to war in Afghanistan a dozen years ago.</i><br />
<i>The pace, of course, is different ... but many of the arguments are much the same and warrant serious attention.</i><br />
<i>Will they get that attention?</i><br />
<i>It all reminded me of the section of a book I contributed to a few years ago - it was a chapter about the limitations of journalism in analysing and explaining war. In particular, the limitations on front-line reporting.</i><br />
<i>But my argument was that there were many more reasons that Afghanistan became "An Unexamined War" - and those arguments seem to resonate today.</i><br />
<i>I've reproduced that section here - apologies for its length.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<b>An Unexamined War</b><br />
It is easy to forget how rapidly the bombardment and invasion of Afghanistan followed the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 – and how unexamined, by politicians and media, was the case for and road to war. <br />
From the moment the BBC’s Frank Gardner attributed the September 11 attacks to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, war in Afghanistan seemed inevitable. An inevitability that effectively silenced proper examination of the case for that war.<br />
The bewilderment on the faces of western leaders as they heard the news – President Bush, you recall, was reading to schoolchildren when the news came through, and Prime Minister Blair, was about to address the TUC in Brighton – was more than just an expression of shock at the unspeakable atrocity.<br />
It reflected, also, their certainty that ‘something must be done’ … but that, initially, they had very little idea what. There had to be retaliation, a strike back – but against who? When, why and to what end? They were far from clear.<br />
<b>Debate?</b><br />
Three days after the attacks, on I4 September, British MPs were recalled to Westminster to meet in emergency session. There were many words but little debate. The then leader of the Liberal Democrats, <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo010914/debtext/10914-01.htm" target="_blank">Charles Kennedy, captured the prevailing sentiment</a> :<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“It seems almost inevitable that there will be some sort of military response at some point—although at the moment we do not know where, when, or against whom.”</i></blockquote>
That echoed Prime Minister Blair’s declaration that … :<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“ … these were attacks on the basic democratic values in which we all believe so passionately and on the civilised world ...<br />NATO has already … determined that this attack in America will be considered as an attack against the alliance as a whole. The UN Security Council on Wednesday passed a resolution which set out its readiness to take all necessary steps to combat terrorism. From Russia, China, the EU, from Arab states, Asia and the Americas, from every continent of the world, has come united condemnation. This solidarity must be maintained and translated into support for action.”</i> </blockquote>
The contribution to this debate from newly elected, leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition,<a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo010914/debtext/10914-01.htm" target="_blank"> Iain Duncan Smith, could almost be described as fawning</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“ … the Prime Minister … is to be congratulated on responding to this crisis quickly and resolutely, and on giving a lead to other nations that value freedom and democracy.” </i></blockquote>
<b>The forgotten dossier</b><br />
Within three weeks, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1579043.stm" target="_blank">the government had produced a dossier</a>, setting out the culpability of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden as well as that of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan. A dossier on which Prime Minister Blair was able to lean <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo011004/debtext/11004-01.htm" target="_blank">when he told parliament, recalled for a second time on October 4</a>, that the Taleban :<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>" … allows them (al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden) to operate with impunity in pursuing their terrorist activity.”</i></blockquote>
How many of us remember that dossier? How many of us read it? How many of us gave it the scrutiny we gave to the Iraq dossiers – both the ‘sexed-up’ September 2002 dossier and the dodgy dossier of February 2003?<br />
How many of us questioned, in the name of seeking ‘truth’, the simple choices Prime Minister Blair set out – as simple and unavoidable for the UK as they were for the Taleban?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“They either surrender the terrorists and close down the terrorist network or they become our enemies. If that happens, and the regime were to change, we are already working in close co-operation with people in and outside Afghanistan to build an alternative and successor regime that is as broad based as possible, unites ethnic groupings and gives people the chance of a stable Government there.” </i></blockquote>
The lack of parliamentary and media scrutiny created a silence in the discourse, filled only by the sound of John Stuart Mill turning in his grave: “Truth can only emerge from the clash of contrary opinions”.<br />
<b>Missed opportunities</b><br />
Yet there was much we journalists could and should have scrutinised. The extent to which Britain’s haste ‘to take down the Taleban regime’ – the phrase that became common currency at the time – aligned itself with what we knew about Tony Blair’s declared principles of foreign intervention, for example.<br />
Since 1997, Prime Minister Tony Blair had been straining both to define – and exercise – what had become known as ‘post-modern’ foreign policy – broadly, the criteria on which the UK might choose to project its power into another state to right those things which, according to British values, were wrongs.<br />
The key text became known as ‘<a href="http://www.number10.gov.uk/archive/1999/04/doctrine-of-the-international-community-2441999-1297" target="_blank">the Chicago speech</a>’ and contained five defining tests: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“First, are we sure of our case? War is an imperfect instrument for righting humanitarian distress; but armed force is sometimes the only means of dealing with dictators. </i><i>Second, have we exhausted all diplomatic options? We should always give peace every chance, as we have in the case of Kosovo. </i><i>Third, on the basis of a practical assessment of the situation, are there military operations we can sensibly and prudently undertake? </i><i>Fourth, are we prepared for the long term? In the past we talked too much of exit strategies. But having made a commitment we cannot simply walk away once the fight is over; better to stay with moderate numbers of troops than return for repeat performances with large numbers. </i><i>And finally, do we have national interests involved?”</i></blockquote>
It was a clever speech that appeared to establish Britain as a kind of global ‘values policeman’ – the five criteria were calculated to justify interventions in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, for example. In fact, of course, it was a delimitation of intervention abroad, blinding the eye turned towards Saudi Arabia or China, for example, where, by any rational assessment, British values were affronted daily – the “sensibly and prudently” escape clause.<br />
<b>The new paradigm</b><br />
The unexamined rush to war in Afghanistan blew those limitations away, arguably shaping the paradigm by which Britain became entangled in President Bush’s crusade in Iraq. And in telling that ‘truth’ about Afghanistan, journalism failed.<br />
Chicago said nothing about regime change; nothing about de-failing failed states; nothing about assuring the safety of British streets by fighting in foreign fields.<br />
In an April 2010 article (<i>The Maps are Too Small, Patrick Porter, RIIA April 2010</i>) for the Royal Institute of International Affairs – Chatham House – Patrick Porter of King’s College, London, summarised where Britain’s foreign policy stood after Afghanistan.<br />
Porter’s article is as potent a condemnation of journalism’s failure as it is of Britain’s loss of focus in Afghanistan and after. The Blair/Brown administration, Porter argues, has become hyperactive on the world stage because :<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“… it claims the country’s security depends on a liberal, ‘rules based’ world order that upholds its values … Britain is endangered by globe-girdling, chaotic processes such as state failure. Broken countries are incubators of extremism, disease and crime.” </i></blockquote>
Britain has found itself committed to de-failing failed states and doing so in a way that is consistent with Britain’s liberal values:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“It cannot tolerate the illiberal. Therefore, London must scan the far horizons and take a forward leaning posture, watching, engaging and intervening on the periphery to protect its core.” </i></blockquote>
This is true of nowhere more than it is of Afghanistan. There we see for real what an open-ended, bottomless, interminable – choose your term of infinity as you will – policy of intervention leads to.<br />
<b>Missing pieces</b><br />
After almost nine years in which British men and women have been fighting and dying in Afghanistan– twice the length of WWII – the average British newspaper reader or the average British TV news bulletin viewer might well ask whether we journalists have helped locate the “missing pieces”.<br />
Can we journalists hold our hands on our hearts and say that we have done all that we could to hold our government properly to account for its expenditure of our ‘blood and treasure’ on a policy in Afghanistan that is maximally interventionist (overturning one regime and putting another in its place) value driven (towards a multi-ethnic plural democracy) and, in its logic (the safety of British streets is secured on the battlefields of Afghanistan) capable of application anywhere on the globe where states fail?<br />
And if we have not done so – and this is crucial – has that failure been the result of constraints on reporting from the front line? Or has it been the result of something else?<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-6665888199595463112012-12-08T17:24:00.000+00:002012-12-09T09:36:35.267+00:00What next for 'Hacked Off' ?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What next for <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/" target="_blank">'Hacked Off'</a>? *<br />
It's not yet over but there's every chance that we're seeing exactly the "ugly stitch-up" that its director Brian Cathcart <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/comment/an-ugly-stitch-up-is-taking-place/" target="_blank">described at the beginning of this week</a>.<br />
'Leveson-lite' press regulation that lacks any statutory backstop to ensure we, the public, can hold editors' and publishers' feet to the fire.<br />
Yet another regime devised by the press, for the press that will be no guarantee of accountability once memories of phone-hacking have faded.<br />
It might not turn out that way, of course. The arithmetics of parliament and petition might still see the interests of the public take precedence over the commercial interests of owners and publishers.<br />
<b>Cynical calculation</b><br />
The press seems to have come a long way in the short time since Leveson published, conceding much, though not all, of what Hacked Off demanded and Leveson recommended. Enough, perhaps, to persuade that majority of the public serially disgusted at the behaviour of the press that this latest iteration of of self-regulation is good enough.<br />
If they pull it off, it might be down to the political and fixing skills of Guy Black. More realistically, though, it derives from a cynical calculation that public memory is short and that nothing in 'Leveson-lite' will stop the press from sliding back into its old ways. Minus the blatant lawbreaking, like phone and email hacking.<br />
<b>Not just phone-hacking</b><br />
It's worth remembering that neither Hacked Off nor the Leveson Inquiry was <i>only</i> about phone-hacking or other illegal activity. Nor about celebrities chafing at the downside of publicity and fame.<br />
What was under the microscope was the habits and 'culture' of the press - serial libels, misrepresentations, intrusions, intimidation, monstering, lynching, blagging, entrapment. And the arrogant mindset that saw nothing wrong in trashing the lives of 'ordinary people' like the Dowlers, the McCanns and Christopher Jeffries. A mindset that served the public interest not at all and was calculated to turn inhumanity and vindictiveness into publishers' profits.<br />
More than anything else, both the Hacked Off campaign and the Leveson inquiry were about bringing accountability to the last powerful, unaccountable institution in the UK.<br />
<b>Public or 'state'</b><br />
Unsurprisingly, the press has used the 's' word - statutory - to scare us all with vague and unspecified warnings that a statutory backstop to independent regulation, the "heart and soul" of Leveson, is the start of the slippery slope to state control. <br />
It's rubbish, of course. Nothing in Leveson amounts to statutory regulation or anything like it. Nor licensing nor state interference. What publishers and editors find so hard to accept is the idea that anyone should ever have the temerity to call them to account, to insist that they explain their decisions and are as transparent as they demand other institutions should be. <br />
The idea that we, the public, should have that power - a power that only statute can ensure and protect - is unthinkable.<br />
But as <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/02/leveson-report-press-must-respond-reasonably?INTCMP=SRCH" target="_blank">this excellent leader in <i>The Observer </i>on 2 December argues</a>, it's misleading to identify public accountability with state control or interference as the press has done:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Britain is not very good at distinguishing between the idea of the state and the public ... The public is the space to which every citizen has equal access. It is underpinned by the rule of the law, freedom of speech, tolerance and the spirit that differences should be settled through argument, inquiry and ultimately the ballot box. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i> The sharp differences that have emerged since the publication of Leveson have at their heart this failure of understanding."</i></blockquote>
<br />
Similarly, the difficulties of framing any statute have been wildly overstated.<br />
In essence, it's about two simple ideas; 'there will be a body that regulates the press that is independent of the press ...' and 'there will be an auditing body, independent of government and parliament and accountable to the public, that oversees the work of the regulating body ...'<br />
The principle isn't so hard. And when it's framed like this, it's easy to see how that auditing body, established by statute, is essential to ensure enduring public confidence.<br />
<b>If ...</b><br />
The Prime Minister's calculation in dismissing the "heart and soul" of Leveson so peremptorily was a simple one, made by a politician whose questionable closeness to News International was something the press never cared to illuminate for us.<br />
Come May 2015 when a mere one or two percentage points might be the difference between a Tory majority government and defeat, the editors of <i>The Sun </i>and the <i>Daily Mail </i>will, David Cameron hopes, carry far more weight than Gerry McCann or Chris Jeffries.<br />
He might still have miscalculated and national newspaper editors might yet snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.<br />
But if the worst happens and the press is left once again to account for itself to itself, Hacked Off and/or its parent the <a href="http://mediastandardstrust.org/" target="_blank">Media Standards Trust</a> (MST)might well have to assume the role that Leveson had in mind for a statutorily backed auditor - ensuring self-regulation doesn't mutate into self-interest and self-regard as it did with the discredited Press Complaints Commission.<br />
There will clearly have to be some body - more than one, ideally, if in the end there's no single auditor backed by statute - that scrutinises press regulation, investigation and sanction on behalf of the public. That critiques any new code and witnesses its application. That can demand action, if only by virtue of public pressure.<br />
In the UK, academe and organisations like the MST and the <a href="http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Reuters Institute</a>* - to name but two - have done good work but have had limited effects on press standards, in part because they're not the kind of organisation that could ever capitalise on public opinion and mood.<br />
<b>Making trouble </b> <br />
For all sorts of reasons, Hacked Off showed how the public's ill-focused disgust with the press could be focused and organised. That we, the public, did indeed care about what journalists were doing in our name, wanted them to be accountable to us and behave in a way that was broadly consistent with normal human values.<br />
Should it come to it, Hacked Off needs to make trouble for the new regulator, asking the questions and demanding the answers any law-backed auditor would. Requiring, with public if not statutory authority, that the press account for itself.<br />
And, bluntly, if they don't do it ... who will? <br />
<br />
*<i>Declaration of interest: I was one of the founder members of 'Hacked Off' and chaired the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism's roundtable that formulated its submission for the Leveson inquiry - a submission that, among other things, proposed the fast track resolution system that is one of Leveson's key recommendations and an idea accepted by most national newspaper editors. </i>Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-28245236654213375512012-11-11T16:07:00.000+00:002012-11-11T16:40:13.154+00:00An intriguing thought<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It might have slipped your mind briefly in the last twenty four hours - it had mine - that key BBC News executives had ‘recused’ themselves during <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/01/bbc-inquiry-jimmy-savile-film" target="_blank">Nick Pollard’s inquiry into the <i>Newsnight </i>Savile investigation</a>.<br />
<br />
That’s to say, they’d taken themselves off the pitch for anything to do with the shelved investigation and/or further Savile allegations.<br />
<br />
I'd assumed that this recusation applied <i>only </i>to matters Savile. But a senior BBC executive told me this morning that those who'd recused themselves - and that included the former DG George Entwistle - interpreted their quarantine as excluding them from any editorial decision making on any further allegations of child abuse.<br />
<br />
Remember, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9768000/9768406.stm" target="_blank">George Entwistle told John Humphrys in the fatal <i>Today </i>interview</a> that the <i>Newsnight </i>McAlpine film had been signed off “at management board level” – normally it would have been what’s known in the BBC as the News Board, usually chaired by the Head of News, Helen Boaden.
The BBC Trust Chairman, Lord Patten, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01nzny2/The_Andrew_Marr_Show_11_11_2012/" target="_blank">told Andrew Marr</a> something similar.<br />
<br />
Now, the line of command upwards from <i>Newsnight </i>prior to the Savile row was: Editor of <i>Newsnight </i>(Peter Rippon) - Head of News Programmes (Steve Mitchell) - Head of News (Helen Boaden) - Director General (George Entwistle)<br />
<br />
Once Rippon had "stepped aside" and other News executives 'recused' themselves, <a href="http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/broadcasters/tim-davie-de-facto-dg-for-savile-scandal/5048057.article" target="_blank">that line of command on 'recused' matters became</a>: acting Editor of Newsnight (??) - Head of Newsgathering (Fran Unsworth) - Director of World Service (Peter Horrocks ... <a href="http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/broadcasters/5-live-boss-to-oversee-bbc-news-savile-coverage/5048287.article" target="_blank">replaced during Horrocks's annual leave by Adrian van Klaveren, the controller of R5Live</a>) - Director of Audio and Music (Tim Davie). That meant Davie was effectively editor-in-chief on 'recused' matters.<br />
<br />
It appears from what I learnt this morning that the <i>Newsnight </i>McAlpine film was judged to fall within the 'recused' area ... and that, therefore, it was dealt with by the temporary management structure and not the regular one.<br />
<br />
If that's the case, then many of the questions over the McAlpine film that John Humphrys fired so effectively at George Entwistle - who declined to raise the complications of 'recusation' as any defence - might just as properly be put to the new acting Director General, Tim Davie. Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-37303186940259591232012-10-25T09:09:00.000+00:002012-10-25T10:58:26.490+00:00Savile ... and the Panorama pitch<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
The BBC confirmed to me this morning that the <i>Newsnight </i>‘Savile’<i> </i>producer,
Meirion Jones, pitched his investigation to <i>Panorama
</i>on the same day he pitched it to <i>Newsnight.
</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The BBC says that in a short, five or six line email to the <i>Panorama </i>editor Tom Giles on 31 October
2011 - two days after Jimmy Savile had died - Jones wrote that he believed he
could gather evidence of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20033700" target="_blank">Savile’s abuse at the Duncroft Home</a> where his aunt had
been headmistress. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The email to Giles was, as he later explained, "to keep his
options open”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jones had already had one meeting with the <i>Panorama </i>editor to talk in general terms
about the possibility of working on longer investigations. And they were due to
meet again – but after <i>Newsnight </i>editor
Peter Rippon had given Jones and reporter Liz MacKean the green light to start
collecting evidence, that meeting never happened.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was no further contact between the <i>Panorama </i>editor and Jones until pre-programme
publicity for the ITV programme <i><a href="http://www.itv.com/itvplayer/video/?Filter=326137" target="_blank">Exposure:the other side of Jimmy Savile</a> </i>began to appear in the press. There is no suggestion
that Giles looked at any of the evidence gathered for <i>Newsnight </i>nor that he was aware of the detail of the investigation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Important questions</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On Tuesday, BBC Director General George Entwistle told MPs: "we do have to address this question of what comes of journalism that doesn't necessarily result in immediate output".</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It's likely that former Sky News executive Nick Pollard will want to know why, when <i>Newsnight </i>producer
Jones had an ‘open channel’ to <i>Panorama, </i>he
and his reporter did not take their evidence to Giles in December 2011 to make a
formal pitch for a half-hour slot.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Soon after the <i>Newsnight </i>investigation was shelved, well-sourced leaks suggested it had been dropped because of pressure from above, to avoid embarrassment over the BBC's planned Christmas Savile tributes and to protect its reputation.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-48207517140249712512012-10-14T21:03:00.000+00:002012-10-22T13:32:51.204+00:00Newsnight, Savile and the DG's real and present danger<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I hope that BBC DG George Entwistle’s decision to hold those <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19930250" target="_blank">“internal,independent and forensic” inquiries </a>doesn’t turn out to be his biggest and last
as Director General.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Especially the inquiry into <i>Newsnight’s </i>decision to pause its investigation into Surrey police and those allegations that they and/or the Crown Prosecution Service mishandled abuse complaints made against Jimmy Savile.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s an inquiry born out of frustration. And it’s easy to see
where the frustration comes from.<br />
In spite of the clearest possible denials
from all concerned, the suspicion persists that he or another BBC "boss" pressured <i>Newsnight </i>editor Peter Rippon to “pull” a ten or twelve minute film detailing Savile's crimes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That's not what happened and, unsurprisingly, there’s never been any evidence that it did. Anyone sane who knows the BBC would have to conclude that Rippon shelved the investigation for sound editorial
reasons, not through pressure from above.<br />
Exactly as he and everyone else involved have insisted throughout. Exactly what the <i>Newsnight
</i>inquiry will find. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But that might be the start and not the end of the new DG's real problems. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Suspicion</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s be clear what the suspicion, the allegation, amounts to.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s not that <i>Newsnight’s
</i>decision to shelve its inquiry was a bad call. Nor that the editor was excessively
cautious, influenced by nods or winks or made a decision he thought his bosses
wanted with one eye on his career. Though, as it happens, none of that's true either.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here’s how the <i>Daily
Mail, </i>put it: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“A Newsnight report
was due to be screened in December, two months after Savile's death, but was <b>pulled by bosses</b> … attempting <b>to cover up</b> the allegations in an
effort <b>to protect (the BBC’s) own
reputation</b>.” </i>(My emphasis)</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
OK? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once more just to make sure; the important bits anyway: “
…pulled by bosses … attempting to cover up the allegations in an effort to
protect (the BBC’s) reputation”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Got it?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Tabloid priorities<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, it’s worth saying from the outset that the very tabloids and
journalists who've frothed over ‘what must have happened’ at the BBC signally failed even to contemplate let alone launch any investigation of their
own into Savile.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If the public record is anything to go by, only one tabloid editor, Paul Connew, ever had the courage to go after Savile and to explain why nothing came of it.<br />
When he was editor of the <i>Sunday Mirror, </i>he wanted to publish the “credible and convincing”
testimony of two of Savile’s victims but was lawyered out.<br />
That was back in
1994 since when, apparently, no other tabloid editor ever lifted a finger to investigate the
rumours that were rife in what we used to call Fleet Street. Presumably they were all too busy hacking phones, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7303801.stm" target="_blank">libelling the McCann family</a>, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/29/sun-daily-mirror-guilty-contempt" target="_blank">lynching Chris Jeffries</a>, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/01/news-of-the-world-john-terry" target="_blank">entrapping the witless</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15867858" target="_blank">stalking nineteen year old girls</a>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not even when Savile had died and the risk of libel had passed
away with him was there any flicker of interest from the press. Were their safes not full of witness testimony waiting for their briefs' green lights? Apparently not.<br />
Instead, just as <i>Newsnight </i>was ramping up its investigation, the same tabloids that have been spitting outrage at the BBC in the last week were lionising Savile, much as they had during his lifetime, re-running the kind of uncritical profiles that had done as much
as anything at the BBC to elevate him to the ‘national treasure’ status he used
so effectively to enable and shield his abuse of young women.*</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Editorial decisions</b><br />
The <i>Newsnight </i>investigation was not as the press coverage over the past week or so has portrayed it. Almost every assumption that's been made about it is wrong.<br />
<b><i>** Update 22/12/12: in the light of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2012/10/jimmy_savile_and_newsnight_a_c.html" target="_blank">the BBC's statement this morning</a>, it's clear that the conversations, statements and accounts on which I based this blog were not complete.** </i></b><br />
For instance, the <i>Newsnight
</i>investigation was never into Savile’s criminally abusive activities <i>per se</i>. It was triggered by the charge that Surrey police had dropped a 2007 investigation into 40 year old abuse allegations because Savile, by then, was too old and frail.<br />
Nor was there ever a cut, ten minute or - depending on your reading choice - twelve minute film ready to go that was "pulled". When the <i>Newsnight </i>editor paused the investigation, it was still at the evidence gathering stage ... evidence he was beginning to have doubts about.<br />
In other words, there was nothing to "pull" - there was an investigation in progress and it had hit a brick wall.<br />
There was no script, even, in spite of what's been reported in the press. There was a 'wish list', an ideal script that set out what the investigating team <i>hoped</i> to be able to prove. But it was a catalogue of aspirations some distance beyond what could be supported by the evidence anyone had actually gathered. It's normal, incidentally, to have a wish list like that - something that everyone can work from that sets out what you'd need to be able to prove to get an investigation on air.<br />
There was little more, in fact, than the rushes of one interview with the investigation's 'star' witness/victim, Karin Ward, and a clutch of telephone conversations with other women apparently echoing her allegations.<br />
One was with <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/oct/04/jimmy-savile-television" target="_blank">'Fiona' who went on to give evidence to the ITV expose</a>.<br />
'Fiona' claimed to have a letter from Surrey police setting out how they’d decided not to pursue her allegations against Savile because of his age and frailty. It would have been crucial corroboration but, in spite of several requests, she failed ever to produce it to the <i>Newsnight </i>team. <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2217352/Jimmy-Savile-scandal-Fake-letter-cast-doubt-victims-claims-played-key-role-BBC-decision.html" target="_blank">The <i>Mail on Sunday </i>has now reported evidence that the letter is a "fake"</a>.<br />
There were other question marks, too, over the 'corroborating' testimony. How it had been gathered and whether the women's connections via a social networking site had had any influence on their testimony, serious and credible though it seemed to be.<br />
<b>Denials</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But there was more.<br />
When the programme put the allegation to the Crown Prosecution Service - that Surrey police had dropped their investigation because of Savile's age and frailty - they denied it point blank.<br />
The CPS said that one of their lawyers had reviewed the Surrey police
investigation and advised them to take no further action because of “lack of
evidence”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They told <i>Newsnight </i>that:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"As this is the
case, it would not be correct to say that his age and frailty was the reason
for no further action being taken."</i></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was nowhere for the investigation to go - certainly not in the time before the programme came off-air for its Christmas break.<br />
But it was neither "pulled" nor "dropped". It was paused, shelved for sound editorial reasons and those alone. And without pressure, direct or subtle, from above.<br />
<b>Danger</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The danger for the DG is that the <i>Newsnight </i>inquiry will establish exactly all of this ... and to the satisfaction of all but the most eye-swivelling. <br />
Danger, too, that it will show exactly what Entwistle has insisted all along. That as Head of BBC Vision and responsible for the network planning to run the Savile tributes, he had only a vague awareness of the <i>Newsnight </i>inquiry. That he, quite understandably, kept at arms length from what was happening in another BBC division ... precisely to avoid allegations of interference. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That will turn the <i>Newsnight </i>question on its head.<br />
From ‘why did <i>Newsnight </i>shelve its investigation?’ to ‘why didn’t the Head of
Vision shelve the tributes once he knew that a BBC programme – or indeed
any other part of the media – was finally investigating Savile?’<br />
That's the real and present danger to the BBC and to its DG.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b style="font-style: italic;">*Update: </b><i>I'm grateful for a tip from Richard Fletcher, the editor of Telegraph.co.uk, pointing up </i><a href="http://www.thelawyer.com/jimmy-savile-turns-to-fox-hayes-for-action-against-the-sun/131780.article" target="_blank"><i>an article in </i>The Lawyer<i> back in 2008</i></a><i> which reported that Savile began legal action against </i>The Sun<i> after articles linking him with Haut de Garenne, the Jersey children's home.</i><br />
<i>According to </i>The Lawyer, The Sun <i>carried a photograph of Savile allegedly visiting Haut de Garenne and followed it with "a series of articles. One asserted that Savile was unwilling to assist with the police investigation and another that he admitted having visited the home". </i><br />
The Sun<i> also criticised Savile for being unprepared to “go some way to fixing it for the victims”.</i></div>
<i>I agree that this makes </i>The Sun's <i>post-mortem tributes to Savile even more extraordinary.</i><br />
<i> <b> </b></i>
<!--EndFragment-->Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-58434540898060843382012-09-27T09:05:00.000+00:002012-09-27T10:05:25.870+00:00Harsh Realities<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm new to this lark - so the whole business of promoting a book is a revelation.<br />
I've seen it from the other side, of course, as a programme editor. Now, it's my turn to be output fodder.<br />
I suppose anyone who's ever written a book, especially one that has six months' worth of research in it as <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stumbling-Over-Truth-sexed-up-dossier/dp/1849541523/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348732938&sr=1-1" target="_blank">Stumbling Over Truth</a> </i>has, just wants to get it out there and people to read it. All of it ... and (totally unrealistically) with the same weight on every word that you placed there when you wrote it.<br />
But, of course, delivering the manuscript is only the start of it. Nor is the boxes of freshly minted book arriving in the publisher's office the end of it.<br />
Maybe there'll be a serialisation? Not for <i>Stumbling Over Truth, </i>sadly, so you'll have to buy it to read it. But you know there'll be the round of signings and panel discussions and media interviews. Reviews and, you hope, a bit of a buzz on blogs and Twitter.<br />
But most of all, you want people to read it.<br />
<b>An odd kind of book</b><br />
Of course, <i>Stumbling Over Truth </i>is a slightly odd kind of book. It's part personal account - why and how I put Andrew Gilligan on air on 29 May 2003 with Dr David Kelly's allegations that the government's September 2002 dossier had been "sexed up".<br />
It's part an almost historical account, derived from the mass of government documents released and leaked over the past decade, of how the September dossier was written ... an account that's some considerable distance from the <a href="http://www.fas.org/irp/world/uk/huttonreport.pdf" target="_blank">conclusions Lord Hutton came to in January 2004</a>.<br />
And it's part a political book. An account from the inside of what it was like to be on the receiving end of New Labour's obsessive exercise in "truth creation" - <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/1997/aug/09/labour.mandelson" target="_blank">Peter Mandelson's phrase, not mine</a> - for the best part of a decade.<br />
The three parts are linked, honest. But however odd your book might be you want people to read it.<br />
<b>Many different approaches</b><br />
Of course, any book that touches on the Iraq war, Tony Blair etc is launched into a world where most people already know what they think and aren't likely to have their opinions changed by any new account ... even one that contains information they hadn't been able to consider before.<br />
And so it was that Blair ultra-loyalists attacked me even before <i>Stumbling Over Truth </i>had been published - criticising the book they imagined I must have written rather than the one I actually had.<br />
One review was more about the reviewer than the book - though thinking about it, many reviews often are. And one journalism professor seemed to think I was too close to events to have written the book in the first place - a slightly bizarre argument that, I confess, I struggle to understand.<br />
Then the panel discussions. One was a little too "free flowing" and, in the end, not much to do with the book; another was very much tighter but still seemed to me to focus on the parts of the book that were the least important and interesting.<br />
<b>Interviews</b><br />
Something similar was true of the interviews.<br />
The chunkiest, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/1997/aug/09/labour.mandelson" target="_blank">with Steve Hewlett of BBC Radio 4's </a><i><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/1997/aug/09/labour.mandelson" target="_blank">The Media Show</a> - </i>it's due to be broadcast on Wednesday 3 October at 1630 - focused largely on my decision to broadcast Dr Kelly's allegations, the management of Andrew Gilligan and the BBC's perception of the row with Alastair Campbell.<br />
All interesting stuff and new - some of this is the evidence that Lord Hutton decided not to hear. But it's almost impossible now to separate it from hindsight. I tried very hard to do that in the book but it took a lot of context and background, the kind of thing that can never really make it into an interview by virtue of the simple fact that a book chapter is several thousand words, an interview several hundred.<br />
Pity, too, that we never touched on the real meat of the book - what Lord Hutton could have discovered about Dr Kelly's allegations had he been more curious. And what it was that motivated Dr Kelly to blow the whistle on the September dossier to several journalists.<br />
<b>More to come</b><br />
More interviews today and next week - two with non-UK broadcasters whose audiences, my hunch is, have even less background from the time than British viewers and listeners. Not quite sure how I'll deal with that. One thing is certain - the fine detail, the arguments over the precise use of words is almost certain to be dulled.<br />
Can't be helped.<br />
The big lesson from all of this is, I suppose, the obvious one.<br />
As you write a book, you sculpt and shape your prose to say as precisely as you can exactly what you mean. You balance its parts to try to indicate what you think is most important and what's less so. And you try to build some kind of narrative, make connections that you hope are revealing.<br />
But as you read one, the author's careful phrases - whole chapters, indeed - fly by barely noticed. You bring all your own preconceptions to the words on the page and those preconceptions prove as resistant as you choose them to be.<br />
For you, the author, much of what you wanted readers to take away they leave behind and those with the will to do so raid the odd sentence and paragraph and give them a meaning the opposite of everything you intended.<br />
And you wonder why you bothered, wondering at the same time what your next book is going to be about. Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-87594449379613326652012-09-12T22:51:00.000+00:002012-09-12T22:51:17.532+00:00Are we nearly there yet?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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And so, I guess it will go on ... (are we nearly there yet).<br />
<a href="http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/09/12/iraq-again/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter" target="_blank">Here's what John Rentoul has replied</a> to <a href="http://storycurve.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/why-you-should-read-book-before-you.html" target="_blank">my reply</a> to <a href="http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/09/11/creating-the-anti-war-truth/" target="_blank">his reply</a> to <a href="https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/stumbling-over-truth-hardback" target="_blank">my book</a> that hasn't been published yet and which he hasn't read but promises to:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"For those who do not remember, Gilligan made three allegations in the scripted version of his report on 29 May 2003 -</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>• that the dossier was, in words attributed directly to Gilligan’s source, “transformed in the week before it was published, to make it sexier”;
</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>•that this transformation “took place at the behest of Downing Street” – Gilligan’s words paraphrasing his source, and elaborated by him in the Mail on Sunday, 1 July 2003, putting Alastair Campbell’s name in his source’s mouth;
</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>•the forty-five minutes statement, in words attributed to Gilligan’s source, “was included in the dossier against our wishes, because it wasn’t reliable; … we believed that the source was wrong. Most people in intelligence weren’t happy with the dossier, because it didn’t reflect the considered view they were putting forward”.</i></blockquote>
John goes on to remind us that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<i>The Hutton inquiry found that the dossier was not “transformed” in the last week. Nor was it true that “most people in intelligence” were unhappy either with the forty-five minutes point or with the dossier generally. The intelligence services corporately, in the form of the Joint Intelligence Committee, approved the dossier and approved the wording of the forty-five minutes point, however much a few individuals at a lower level, including David Kelly, may have disagreed with its inclusion."</i></blockquote>
<b>Where to start?</b><br />
I know it's hard ... but look, let's try to deal with what is ... not what we'd like to be.<br />
In the last week of the dossier's production, the JIC's downbeat conclusion was dropped (a Downing Street staffer first suggested this, followed by an FCO spin doctor - suggestions finally "agreed to" by Alastair Campbell, as he records in his diary).<br />
At the same time, Campbell and Blair decided to add a foreword, drafted by Campbell, which was significantly more alarming than the excised conclusion. Sadly, for those who would deny it, the documentation is unequivocal that this "sexing up" (if no other) happened in the last week of the dossier's production.<br />
Meanwhile, in that last week the intelligence analysts were trying as hard as they could to get the 45 minute claim taken out of the dossier or, if that wasn't possible, to ensure that the reservations they and others in intelligence had about it were included alongside the stark claim.<br />
Other "transformations" in that last week included changes to the text made at Jonathan Powell's and David Omand's suggestions and the excision of the word "programmes" from the dossier's title, "transforming" it from <i>"Iraq’s </i>Programmes<i> for Weapons of Mass Destruction"</i> to <i>"Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction"</i>.<br />
All these changes - made at Downing Street's behest - happened after the JIC members had "silently" signed off the text of the dossier ... that's to say, they never met as a body to approve the text. That text was circulated on the understanding that members would cry foul if there was anything there to which they objected.<br />
<b>Wording</b><br />
They didn't object. But as it happens, the man who mattered most - Sir Richard Dearlove - cared little about the actual wording of the dossier - he made that clear from the outset. Indeed, he delegated the final read of the text to a subordinate.<br />
He cared principally, and quite rightly, that nothing in the dossier should jeopardise his agents or operations.<br />
Contrary to John's assertion, he thought the wording was a matter for the Prime Minister, his staff and the JIC chairman, John Scarlett. <br />
Irrespective of Lord Hutton's conclusions - and I explain at length in the book why he was mistaken - the only facts we have argue strongly that the dossier was, as Dr Kelly alleged "“transformed in the week before it was published, to make it sexier” and that "transformation ... took place at the behest of Downing Street".<br />
Fine to believe that was the right thing to do - not so fine to pretend it didn't happen and that what Dr Kelly told Gilligan and others was wrong.<br />
<b>Reliable?</b><br />
As to the 45 minute claim, Dr Kelly reflected to a number of journalists - not just Andrew Gilligan - the view throughout the intelligence community that the 45 minutes claim "wasn't reliable". We now know beyond argument that Dr Kelly was correctly reporting what everyone in intelligence, from Sir Richard Dearlove down, knew of the claim's limitations.<br />
The JIC drafting team struggled with the intelligence analysts through several iterations of the wording of the claim - but in the end, the decision was made to include a cropped version of the intelligence in a wording that gave the public no hint of those limitations.<br />
And those who decided to do that knew what they were doing - again, anyone is at liberty to think it was the right thing to do but not to assert that it didn't happen.<br />
Now ... this is getting really rather dull and I'm getting slightly embarrassed at the number of times I'm finding myself saying 'read the book'.Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-70832895470426765882012-09-11T21:22:00.000+00:002012-09-11T21:50:55.219+00:00Why you should read the book before you review it<br />
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It’s hard to know what to make of <a href="http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/09/11/creating-the-anti-war-truth/" target="_blank">John Rentoul’s blog</a> that tells you what to think about <a href="https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/stumbling-over-truth-hardback" target="_blank">my new book and the Blair government’s September 2002 dossier</a>.<br />
<div class="p2">
Unfortunately, I've never read much of John’s work – though I do follow him on Twitter. From that and from the comments on his blog, I infer he’s got a bit of form when it comes to the former Prime Minister and the war on Iraq.<br />
Perhaps I shouldn't be as surprised as I am that he feels able to tell us what to think about my book without being troubled by actually reading it.<br />
Very few have yet. As I write, the ink is still drying at the printers.<br />
<b>Serious libel</b></div>
<div class="p2">
However … I’m intrigued that John calls Dr Kelly’s allegations about the September dossier “one of the most serious libels in political history”. That’s quite a charge which, I’m sure, he can substantiate.<br />
Or perhaps not – as we now know, Dr Kelly was correct in every particular.</div>
<div class="p2">
John is wrong, too, about more or less everything else he assumes I say in the book. </div>
<div class="p2">
<b>Absolutely right</b><br />
As it happens, I don’t argue that I was only “sort of right" and that "Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell were totally wrong”.<br />
I do argue that I was absolutely right to broadcast Dr Kelly’s allegations, though I had no agenda of my own in doing so other than to lift a small corner on the truth of the September 2002 dossier.</div>
<div class="p2">
As for Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell, I think I’ll disappoint a lot of those who want to ‘prove’ both were "war criminals" who “lied” to take the country into an “illegal war” etc etc.<br />
I don’t argue, as did Desmond Tutu, that the case for war was “premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction” - I set out the reasons in my previous blog.</div>
<div class="p2">
John concedes that “Gilligan did not use the l-word” but then ruins what looked like it might become a promising argument by asserting that “he said, in effect, that the Government ‘probably’ lied”.<br />
That phrase “in effect” and others similar have dogged this whole debate.<br />
Everyone thinks they "know" what "in effect" was said.<br />
<b>Jibe</b></div>
<div class="p2">
Contrary to John’s jibe – not worthy of him, I think? – I know exactly what Andrew Gilligan said on air, what he did not and what he intended to.<br />
You’ll have to buy the book to see the full sequence of events – but I was clear that we could substantiate every word of what Gilligan intended to say. The allegations he’d presented to me in his notes and set out in his script – yes, there was a script, by the way.</div>
<div class="p2">
That script read:</div>
<div class="p2">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“The first thing you see (in the September dossier) is a preface written by Tony Blair that includes the following words: ‘Saddam’s military planning allows for some weapons of mass destruction to be ready within forty five minutes of an order to deploy them’.<br />Now that claim has come back to haunt Mr Blair because if the weapons had been that readily to hand, they probably would have been found by now.<br />But you know, it could have been an honest mistake, but what I have been told is that the government knew that claim was questionable, even before the war, even before they wrote it in their dossier.”</i></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="p2">
I would challenge anyone to contest the truth of any of that.<br />
<b>Error</b> </div>
<div class="p2">
For reasons that only he knows, Gilligan decided to do his 6.07 two-way without that script in front of him. It was an error – a huge error. His formulation of the allegation that I knew we could substantiate – that “the government knew that claim was questionable, even before the war, even before they wrote it in their dossier” – became mangled:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i> “the Government probably knew that the forty-five minute figure was wrong, even before it decided to put it in”.</i></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="p2">
John writes that “this is, of course, er, not consistent with the facts, and no “probably” about it.” Unfortunately for him, it's entirely consistent with the facts.<br />
Gilligan's mistake was not that he made this inference - it was, in fact, a perfectly reasonable inference to draw from what Dr Kelly had told him. Had he said "<i>I think </i>that the government probably knew ..." he would have been on much firmer ground.<br />
His mistake - and it was a very, very serious one - was to attribute his inference to Dr Kelly. The inference, however, we now know was in line with all the facts.<br />
I think John knows that. He certainly should.<br />
<b>Questionable intelligence</b></div>
<div class="p2">
We now know for certain that the Head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, the Chairman of the JIC, John Scarlett, the Chief of Defence Intelligence, Sir Joe French and the Chief of the JIC Assessments Staff, Julian Miller, all knew the 45 minutes claim was “questionable” – that it was single sourced, without a secure reporting line and, the analysts in Sir Joe’s service thought, both “wrong” and applicable only to battlefield weapons and not WMD.</div>
<div class="p2">
We know, too, that the Prime Minister’s Director of Strategy and Communications, Alastair Campbell, had read the JIC assessments that went into the dossier – or at least, that’s what he told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee towards the end of June 2003.<br />
<b>Plausible?</b></div>
<div class="p2">
Is the idea that those preparing the dossier – including Campbell – didn’t know the claim was at best “questionable” at worst “wrong” plausible?<br />
Is it plausible that Campbell included the claim in his draft of the foreword, unqualified, without knowing its limitations?<br />
Everyone will no doubt come to their own conclusion on both.<br />
As to "creating the truth", I’m surprised that a political specialist like John is unaware of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/1997/aug/09/labour.mandelson" target="_blank">Peter Mandelson’s chilling interview with Katherine Viner of the Guardian back in 1997</a>. </div>
<div class="p2">
That’s a pity. I commend it to him - there he would find that it was Mandelson not I who coined the phrase “create the truth”. <br />
It might well be a “media-studies phrase” – I don’t know and I bow to John’s expertise in these things.<br />
<b>Obstruction and concealment</b></div>
<div class="p2">
It’s interesting how those who prefer not to be critical of Blair and his case for war now direct our thoughts towards what they term, as John does, “Saddam’s history of obstruction and concealment”.<br />
While that was part of the argument at the time, it was not the part of the case that argued for urgent military action.<br />
That history - and more importantly, by the winter of 2002/3, that present - was open to differential interpretations.<br />
Again, if John hasn't caught up with the <a href="http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/Bx27.htm" target="_blank">UNMOVIC reports of early 2003</a> (and not the gloss that Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell and Colin Powell put on them) he should.<br />
Hans Blix reported at the end of January 2003, for example that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far with UNMOVIC ... access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect ... we have further had great help in building up the infrastructure of our office in Baghdad and the field office in Mosul.
Arrangements and services for our plane and our helicopters have been good.
The environment has been workable."</i></blockquote>
Obstruction and concealment? Hmmm.<br />
In any event, Saddam's history was no evidence of <i>imminent</i> threat … Blair’s own Chief of Staff and Foreign Secretary told him as much at the time. The Head of MI6 told me something similar, too, within days of the fall of Baghdad.<br />
<b>Self interest?</b> </div>
<div class="p2">
Do I have an “interest in proving that what the <i>Today</i> programme alleged in May 2003 was "essentially" true, as John claims (how DO these journalists look inside others’ minds)?<br />
To be picky for a moment - the <i>Today </i>programme alleged nothing. We reported the allegations of a credible source.<br />
But on the substantive point - no, I have no interest in proving anything was "essentially" true nor that it was part of some "higher truth". I'm interested in showing only why I knew at the time that Dr Kelly's allegations were both reportable and part of the truth of the dossier.<br />
Gilligan mangled Dr Kelly's allegations in one broadcast and paid the price. Was that good journalism? No. Was that one broadcast defensible? No. But of course, the other twenty or so he made that day followed the script I'd approved and he'd ignored in that one 6.07 two-way. And I stand by the allegations in that script still.<br />
Were Dr Kelly’s allegations “false in every specific”? Well, obviously not – Lord Butler and an army of FOI researchers have left us in no doubt of that.</div>
<div class="p2">
Was the BBC “anti-war”? Well, I can’t speak for the BBC now, but I know for a fact it wasn't at the time and I'm certain I was neither pro- nor anti-war either … except in the very broadest sense that old men like me should never find comfort in sending the young to die their deaths for them.<br />
<b>Advice to reviewers</b><br />
Perhaps John will read my book before he writes any more about it.<br />
I hope that when - if - he does he'll find that far from contradicting “by assertion” Hutton and Butler, I give what I believe is a reasoned account of Hutton’s shortcomings while commending Butler, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, the Intelligence and Security Select Committee and the Public Administration Committee as the common sense they all so evidently were.</div>
<div class="p2">
I have a feeling he'll be disappointed but am confident his spleen will live to fight another day.</div>
<div class="p2">
As for whether New Labour had the habit of “creating the truth” – well, he'll have to take that up with Peter Mandelson not me.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-41650885098537181302012-09-03T17:47:00.000+00:002012-09-11T16:38:32.024+00:00Tutu, Blair and the 'L' word<br />
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Was <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/02/desmond-tutu-tony-blair-iraq" target="_blank">Desmond Tutu right to accuse Tony Blair - and George Bush, for that matter - of a "lie"</a>?<br />
It's a question that's at the heart of my new book <i><a href="https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/stumbling-over-truth-hardback" target="_blank">Stumbling Over Truth</a>, </i>published on 19 September.<br />
<i>**Update - looks like we've reverted to the original publication date; 24 September, the 10th anniversary of the September dossier**</i><br />
Today - 3 September 2012 - is, as it happens, the tenth anniversary of Tony Blair’s decision finally to publish an “intelligence” dossier showing why he believed Saddam Hussein and his Weapons of Mass Destruction were a clear and present danger needing urgent military attention.<br />
More so than, say, Libya, Iran or even North Korea.<br />
<div class="p1">
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB254/doc05.pdf" target="_blank">The publication of that dossier, on 24 September,</a> was a key moment in what Desmond Tutu calls:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“the immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 …”</i> </blockquote>
Though once the dossier had done its job – grabbing headlines and easing Blair’s passage through the recall of an increasingly sceptical Parliament - it effectively disappeared from view.<br />
<b>Misleading</b></div>
<div class="p1">
We all now know that the September dossier – indeed the whole intelligence/WMD basis of the case for war – was misleading. Saddam had no appreciable WMD.<br />
And we now know it wasn't simply a case of intelligence gathered, assessed, interpreted and presented to the public in good faith turning out to be wrong.<br />
The limitations of the intelligence were known and were a source of tension inside the intelligence community before John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), and Alastair Campbell decided to use it as they did in the September dossier and elsewhere in the case for invading Iraq.<br />
The way in which that intelligence was used was misleading, of that there is no doubt.<br />
But was it a "lie"?<br />
<b>A question of faith</b><br />
Those around Tony Blair between 9/11 and the night of "shock and awe" in February 2003 were struck by the strength of his belief that Saddam Hussein had and was "continuing to develop WMD". <br />
Blair insisted he'd come to that belief because of the intelligence he was seeing - yet it was a belief the Head of MI6 at the time seemed not to share. <br />
But he'd faced down the experts and the evidence before - and had been right to do so. Over Milosevic. Remembering that and seeing the strength of his belief that Saddam had WMD effectively silenced contrary voices, according to some inside Downing Street and the Foreign Office at the time.<br />
It was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink" target="_blank">groupthink</a> in action.</div>
<div class="p1">
And so, when in late August 2002, Blair decided it was time to share with the public the intelligence he'd found so convincing, those who thought it a bad idea - and there were many - zipped their lips and got on with producing the dossier he needed.<br />
In fact, a dossier had been in production for over six months by then. Several drafts had been written but never published for the simple reason that, according to those around at the time, there wasn't the intelligence to convince anyone who didn't want to be convinced.<br />
<b>Questionable intelligence</b> </div>
<div class="p1">
As officials were pulling together the many aborted papers and dossiers that were just "too dull to publish", two pieces of intelligence came into MI6 that seemed, to those who wanted to believe it, evidence that Saddam had an active and growing WMD programme.<br />
But there were problems. Both pieces of intelligence were single-sourced; both had questionable reporting lines; both raised more questions than they could answer; neither gave anything close to a full picture ... and both were eventually withdrawn by MI6 as unreliable. </div>
<div class="p1">
One of them – the so-called 45 minute claim, the claim that Saddam’s WMD could be deployed within 45 minutes of an order to do so – was thought by expert analysts in intelligence to be wrong. They thought the ultimate source, a sub-source unknown to MI6, had misunderstood something he'd heard. If the 45 minute claim applied to anything, they thought it could only be battlefield weapons, not WMD.<br />
It shouldn't be in a public dossier they argued, but if it had to be, it should be carefully worded and surrounded with qualifications.</div>
<div class="p1">
<b>"Sexed-up"?</b></div>
<div class="p1">
They were ignored. The 45 minute claim, worded less than carefully and shorn of all qualifications was written into the dossier in a way that gave no hint of the original intelligence's limitations. Or that anyone in intelligence thought it might be wrong.<br />
And though MI6 wouldn’t let the second piece of intelligence be used in the dossier, 'C' did allow assertions that relied on it.<br />
In the final week, the dossier lost its downbeat conclusion (written by the JIC team drafting the dossier’s main text) and gained an alarmist foreword (drafted by Alastair Campbell).<br />
Language was hardened following suggestions made in Downing Street; changes made after the spooks had seen the text for the last time.<br />
It was a political, rhetorical dossier dressed up to look like intelligence - as if the imprimatur of those whose trade was treachery gave Downing Street's case a credibility its own reputation could not. </div>
<div class="p1">
It was “sexed-up”.<br />
<b>Mens rea</b></div>
<div class="p1">
But does that mean Desmond Tutu is justified in saying that Blair’s case for war was “premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction”?<br />
I think not. And for that reason, I've never called the dossier or anything in it a "lie" nor accused Tony Blair or Alastair Campbell of "lying".<br />
Nor did Andrew Gilligan in his infamous broadcasts of 29 May 2003, when he reported the concerns of Dr David Kelly. Nor, as far as I’m aware, has anyone in the BBC, certainly not when speaking on the BBC's behalf.<br />
It was much more complex than that. And in at least one important way, very much worse.<br />
Lying requires a guilty mind - a <i>mens rea </i>as the lawyers call it. The liar knows X is true and Y is false - and deliberately chooses to say Y is the truth.<br />
I don't believe that Tony Blair or anyone around him <i>knew </i>that Saddam had no WMD and chose to say that he had. That's what would have been necessary for it to have been a "lie".<br />
What they did know, however, was that the evidence to support the Prime Minister's belief was thin and at best ambiguous. And that what there was was uncorroborated, insecurely sourced, limited, questionable, arguable and, some thought, wrong.<br />
It was no basis on which to persuade a sceptical party and public into supporting something as grave and uncertain as a foreign war.<br />
<b>Creating the truth</b> </div>
<div class="p1">
The September dossier, indeed the whole of the government's case for war was no more nor less than what we'd come to expect of New Labour.<br />
It was not a "lie". It was what Peter Mandelson called "creating the truth".<br />
The decision to take a nation to war is the most grave any democratic government can make. Young British men and women shouldn't be placed in harm's way - some sent to their deaths - with anything other than the most sober reflection on all the evidence, carefully and dispassionately presented. That means complete with all its qualifications, doubts and counter evidence. Anything else is rhetoric.<br />
The dossier was rhetoric. The question is, though, whether presenting that rhetoric as "intelligence" was worse than a lie.<br />
<b>Off the hook</b><br />
There's another problem with the 'L' word, too. It lets those who, like New Labour, "create the truth" off the hook.<br />
It enables Tony Blair to respond that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“To repeat the old canard that we lied about the intelligence is completely wrong as every single independent analysis of the evidence has shown."</i></blockquote>
That's true, of course. No sensible analysis has ever shown Tony Blair "lied". Nor was that the allegation levelled by Dr David Kelly and reported by Andrew Gilligan, in spite of Alastair Campbell's efforts to persuade us all that it was<br />
However, substitute for the word "lied" the phrase "created the truth" or "misled the British public about the certainty of the intelligence and the conclusions that could be drawn from it" and most people might well take the view he and those around him are guilty as charged.</div>
Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-15211953046511364012012-07-28T22:04:00.002+00:002012-07-29T12:23:34.363+00:00Why Cav couldn't win<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQZjLb5dLBRIEFFeuD7tITP9yR2RGzqsGUQ8PwOhkoN9-OC0H1xhJNuB-Rg_LduRkYmqwuFl8nKSYsUvlDdBmTHHfetYXkeC8Gd85j1DRMPh1tcDQMndkn5TUJg-OGY5ZWETRTtw7cKH8l/s1600/CavMall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQZjLb5dLBRIEFFeuD7tITP9yR2RGzqsGUQ8PwOhkoN9-OC0H1xhJNuB-Rg_LduRkYmqwuFl8nKSYsUvlDdBmTHHfetYXkeC8Gd85j1DRMPh1tcDQMndkn5TUJg-OGY5ZWETRTtw7cKH8l/s320/CavMall.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
For those of us who wanted to see Mark Cavendish celebrate on the
Mall, the brutal truth is that this became a race neither he nor Team GB could win.<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Not because he wasn't the fastest sprinter in the race - he was - nor because they weren’t the strongest team, the </span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19007720" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">“dream team”</a><span style="background-color: white;"> that Cav called them.
They were. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They gave everything and they deserve
every ounce of our respect, admiration and credit for that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nor was the race strategy necessarily wrong. Only a madman would try to out-think Dave Brailsford and his team and when Chris Froome said they did all they could, he was right.<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">They rode to perfection the only race that ever had any chance of delivering Cav to the
place from where he’d be unbeatable in the sprint.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>So what went wrong?</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Every professional rider knows the race
has a mind of its own. So do those of us who sit slumped on sofas watching otherwise inexplicable finishes in the Giro, the Tour or the Vuelta. And that mind isn't rational. It can be self-denying, self-destructive even. Perverse, petulant and peevish. Capable of swallowing up and setting at nought the efforts of the brave. And, sometimes, as determined to deny victory as it is to award it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so it turned out.<br />
This was a denial of victory for Cav and Team GB, not a defeat.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Everyone said before the start that it was five riders against a hundred and forty. Or,
realistically, Cav against all except his own team. And the simple fact is that none of
the other teams with serious sprinters wanted to win as much as they wanted to Cav not
to. <br />
<br />
<b>Metronome</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
It was Team GB’s gamble that at least one of the Americans,
Australians or, especially, the Germans had to be as determined to deliver their
sprinter(s) to the front with 500 to go as they were determined to deliver Cav. They were wrong. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There were only ever two ways it could end - the good way and the bad way. And from Team GB's point of view, it turned out to be the bad way. Not with a sprint, set up by Bradley Wiggins' metronomic drumbeat, but with a breakaway that went out and stayed out. It’s the way the classics often end; remember Tom Boonen in
this year’s Paris-Roubaix? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By the run into London and with the breakaway almost
the size of the peloton, generating breakaways of its own, the game was up. And even w<span style="background-color: white;">hen Cancellara rode himself into the barriers and out of the race, there were
still the likes of Gilbert, Uran and the eventual winner Vinokurov with enough of the lone bolter’s temperament to go out and stay out.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Cav or nothing</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
On the day, Team GB lost it in the last two laps of Box Hill,
in spite of - maybe even because of - their immense work rate. <span style="background-color: white;">It was that work rate that persuaded the other sprinters' teams there was no point. It also made the breakways inevitable, breakaways with </span><span style="background-color: white;">a lead, riders and size that mattered. </span><span style="background-color: white;">It's the way the cunning and the strong but not so fast neutralise the brute force of the sprinters. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Actually, though, they lost it months back with the ‘deal’ effectively to
swap Cav’s defence of his 2011 green jersey for Wiggo’s 2012 yellow. It seemed the dream deal, though it was never clear why
the Sky Team needed Cav on the Tour - his three stage wins were impressive enough, though with a leadout train, it could easily have been six. Instead, he was part-time domestique and, astonishingly in one mountain stage, a paceman.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But once it was payback time and T<span style="background-color: white;">eam GB were saying out loud it was Cav or
nothing, it was almost inevitable they'd be left with nothing. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white;">The race didn't know what it did want, but it knew what it didn't. And the best way of not being hypnotised by the Wiggo metronome was to put a couple of kilometres between yourself and it. And keeping it there.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Cav or nothing meant Team Sky denied themselves the option of sending a rider up the road - and though David Millar had won a Tour stage just like that, the chances of him either controlling the breakway(s) or bringing a win that way were next to nil.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Frustrating, but it's what makes road racing the fascination it is. And why the best, quickest and strongest riders don't always win.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div>Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-12198669073362039332012-06-14T10:46:00.002+00:002012-06-14T11:00:12.550+00:00Sport, soccer ... and value?<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmVCNI9FGs7IpKU8mtTF9eJmzx5Y6NuMmfoK4XSVo4Xjhg9wA58fpzFbHvvSaz-PKeqU_d_MpjKPxuc1xx6aP-UYYGAO-_cYHbguVFyrkq6V2ZkkdUkdtulWiML4gmy5QfGR9rzt8PhcY5/s1600/Prem+League.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmVCNI9FGs7IpKU8mtTF9eJmzx5Y6NuMmfoK4XSVo4Xjhg9wA58fpzFbHvvSaz-PKeqU_d_MpjKPxuc1xx6aP-UYYGAO-_cYHbguVFyrkq6V2ZkkdUkdtulWiML4gmy5QfGR9rzt8PhcY5/s320/Prem+League.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Is soccer’s Premier League <i>really</i> a <a href="http://football.uk.reuters.com/leagues/premiership/news/2012/06/13/07A8FCD4-B590-11E1-B9E7-540B8033923B.php" target="_blank">£1bn a year business</a>? A billion a year just for the UK market, incidentally - who knows the eventual global value of the
next three years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It’s a 70% hike on the previous price, inflated by BT’s
desperate bidding, designed to deny a slice of the league to fellow second-tier
competitor, ESPN.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And this morning, there’s been any number of those who care
far more about soccer than seems sensible arguing on the airwaves what it should all mean. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Most seem to agree that what it won’t mean is a better deal for ‘ordinary fans’,
cheaper ticket prices or better development of young, home nations players. I’m
sure all of that and more is true.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The numbers clearly make sense to Sky and BT – Sky Sports
subscriptions form a substantial chunk of BskyB’s £6.6m plus annual take from
viewers and doubtless BT hope something similar will come their way. It’ll have
to if they’re going to get any return on the £6.5m an hour they’re stumping up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It’s a classic bubble … but one that’s refused to burst.
Yet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Value <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of the things that the banking and sovereign debt crises
have made us all more aware of than perhaps we were is that ‘value’ is more
abstract than we thought. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We all know that things are only worth what someone is
prepared to pay. We’ve all seen it with house prices, <i><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006nb9z" target="_blank">Bargain Hunt</a></i> on TV and even the price of
petrol.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But we have a vague sense lurking somewhere in our minds
that the ‘value’ of a sack of potatoes or something that has real ‘work’ in it, like a car, or a doctor’s cure has more intrinsic ‘value’ than a complex
financial instrument, the odds on a bet, the cost of borrowing money … and the
right to watch a live soccer match.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, I’m no soccer fan. For me, soccer has no “transfixing
appeal” and therefore the right to watch a live match has no value to me either.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yet I have to shovel money at the Premier League, money that
works through the system and, among other things, ascribes implausible value to
a couple of hundred young men and their agents. And creates a business model
that’s debt ridden and loss making, and therefore unsustainable in any rational
world, for more than half the businesses in the league. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here’s why.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I follow three sports. Rugby union, cricket and cycling. If
I want to watch any of those live on TV, I have to buy a ‘bundle’ of Sky Sports
and Eurosport (though, yes, ITV4 <i>does</i>
cover the big cycling events, ‘free’ at the point of delivery and I do get the Six
Nations on the BBC) that costs around £300 a year – twice the BBC licence fee. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And since ESPN snatched half the rugby premiership, another
seventy quid if I want to guarantee that I can see the games I want.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Fixed price trollies<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The vast majority of what’s in that £300+ bundle has no
value to me – not just the soccer but that’s the greater and costlier part of
it. But I have to pay for it nonetheless to get at what does have some value. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It’s a bit like having a fixed trolley price at Tesco (oh … ok
… Waitrose) where the store fills it with £400’s worth of stuff when you only want £20’s
worth. And the other £380’s worth has no intrinsic value but has had its price
inflated by crazed bidding with the wholesalers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course, you’ll hear the same argument about the BBC
licence fee. You have to buy one if you want to watch live TV at all – even if
you never watch BBC programmes. Though the way the maths work, you’re likely to
end up paying far more for what you don’t watch, don’t value, in a broadband
provider’s or Sky bundle than in the BBC’s meagre licence fee.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You could argue I don’t<i>
need</i> to watch the sports that I value live on TV. And that it’s up to me to decide
whether the price I’m asked to pay is close to the value I put on the
opportunity to watch. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That’s true – except for one thing. That price has nothing
to do with the value of the sports I do watch and everything to do with the grossly,
chronically distorted bubble economics of premiership soccer that I don't watch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Value and success</b>
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaLuAt5EJZ0n-sIVr1BOj_WpB_qrILVPkTHdQMm2UvEKWzPO2I6jSD4DDlPLRZX6bulMTHignSvwYQWCwZEuXrqYq0H4b7ntbforASGXqh6GnAU5Ab5LqR2N6UvzYwr0FUUPhyphenhyphenVVuwX8Z0/s1600/Athens+Stadium+2005+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaLuAt5EJZ0n-sIVr1BOj_WpB_qrILVPkTHdQMm2UvEKWzPO2I6jSD4DDlPLRZX6bulMTHignSvwYQWCwZEuXrqYq0H4b7ntbforASGXqh6GnAU5Ab5LqR2N6UvzYwr0FUUPhyphenhyphenVVuwX8Z0/s320/Athens+Stadium+2005+(1).jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are two other consequences, too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As I imagine we’ll find out again soon, the Premier League
is one thing, the English national soccer team another. And that latter really isn’t
very good. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of all the things the money pouring into top flight soccer has done,
improving any of the home nations’ chances of ever winning anything isn’t one
of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Those who know more than me about soccer tell me the
Premiership has little to do with national teams and I’m sure that’s true. But
it has to be bizarre that the country that hosts what is apparently the most valuable soccer league in the world can rarely get beyond the last eight in international competitions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That does a huge disfavour to British champions in other
sports who really can beat the world, who generate national pride instead of
sullen disappointment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My hunch is that during the Olympics, many of us will watch
British champions win medals in sports we’ve never seen on TV before –
because they’re rarely there or, when they are, they're broadcast when only the athletes and their families are watching. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And these will be champions who, in the early years of their
careers, will have had to pay their own way, buy their own kit and compete during
their annual leave from their ‘proper’ jobs. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And
though lottery funding has changed beyond recognition the lives of those who
make it to the elite in these sports, you can imagine at least some of our gold
medallists looking across at an indifferent soccer player breezing by in his
second best Ferrari, wondering whether
we really do have any sense of the value of sport. </span></div>
</div>Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-39422425345292118982012-06-13T17:12:00.002+00:002012-06-13T17:12:44.194+00:00Time for Birt, v2?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWHzi7FpkzYESPqlERDFj9H9SFB9aJ5G-BqOl65C18ekY96ytOqVOT9UqvO6tu_FQ4UFpzCttJQ6NlM87onk4JEdHbMMteFjzwF_k7Z-kobsiiXZPqFP4HNEEdN0-Khohj5OVVG1gjJ7Ln/s1600/Birt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWHzi7FpkzYESPqlERDFj9H9SFB9aJ5G-BqOl65C18ekY96ytOqVOT9UqvO6tu_FQ4UFpzCttJQ6NlM87onk4JEdHbMMteFjzwF_k7Z-kobsiiXZPqFP4HNEEdN0-Khohj5OVVG1gjJ7Ln/s320/Birt.jpg" width="168" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">John Birt's hour come round again?</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I enjoy reading - and listening to - my old friend and colleague Steve Richards.<br />
But when he writes about his onetime employer, the BBC, something odd seems to get hold of him. That's true of his latest column <i>'<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1366190997">What's needed at the BBC is the rigour of the Birt era'</a></i><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/steve-richards/steve-richards-whats-needed-at-the-bbc-is-the-rigour-of-the-john-birt-era-7836887.html" target="_blank"> </a><br />
It's reasonable enough to speculate on what the kerfuffle over Pageantgate (oh, come on ... <i>someone</i> must have called it that already?) might mean for the search for a new BBC DG. But Steve makes a bit of a stretch when he tells us it proves "<i>the institution is in need of fresh leadership and, arguably, for leadership of any kind at all</i>".<br />
And that one of the things the "fresh leadership" of a new DG needs to do is cull the "<i>tendency for a small, but significant, part of the output to lapse into unconvincing populism</i>".<br />
I don't know anyone inside or outside the Beeb who thinks it got the pageant right. But I've not come across too many who think the rest of the jubilee coverage was anything less than first-rate. I made both clear <a href="http://storycurve.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/pageant-lament.html" target="_blank">here</a> and, I hope, on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006slnx" target="_blank">Radio 4's Feedback</a>.<br />
Steve's not far off when he describes it as "<i>misjudged populism</i>". But he's flat wrong when he asserts that what went wrong with the pageant is "<i>part of a pattern, and symptomatic of an inverse snobbery that has infected parts of the BBC since the departure of John Birt as Director-General</i>".<br />
<b>A shiny floor show with an event attached</b><br />
It's almost certainly much simpler than that.<br />
I have no inside knowledge, but I'd be astonished if the decisions over how to cover the pageant were the result of anything other than a) the realities (people/resources) of covering so many events in so short a time and b) the usual bloody skirmishes between the BBC's feudal baronies.<br />
This wasn't serious old News trying to be funky and failing, like that toe-curling Jeremy-Vine-as-cowboy election feature or the cringingly awful celeb boat party. Once the skirmishes were over, this was always meant to be a shiny floor show made, for the most part, by shiny floor people ... with an event attached. And my hunch is that what came out of the screen was pretty much to BBC One Controller Danny Cohen's taste if no-one else's.<br />
But you'd expect me to bridle at the passage where Steve tries to link what went wrong at the pageant with Hutton via the number of BBC managers: "<i>Those who followed the long trail of complacent managerial emails published during the Hutton Inquiry after the Iraq war will recognise the persistent problem. So many senior managers are theoretically responsible that few, if any, are directly responsible and accountable</i>".<br />
<b>Shamless book plug</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6UpzX9wmQBJv71Hl5Wdu7biDEKmIveDvBs35UjBMSgRZk__Z2MhO1Q4ndvXJ9wzZTNvEpF9Pgbd3xbzdR3Lmf2uPqDMiqLMpHGVG53n_on5qS1iQm_n9A1ve7285ywB2EMndrwRvYW5UL/s1600/Book.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6UpzX9wmQBJv71Hl5Wdu7biDEKmIveDvBs35UjBMSgRZk__Z2MhO1Q4ndvXJ9wzZTNvEpF9Pgbd3xbzdR3Lmf2uPqDMiqLMpHGVG53n_on5qS1iQm_n9A1ve7285ywB2EMndrwRvYW5UL/s200/Book.jpeg" width="131" /></a></div>
It's hard to know where to start with that and you'll have to wait 'til my book <i><a href="http://www.bitebackpublishing.com/authors/289" target="_blank">Stumbling Over Truth</a> </i>comes out in September to get the full version as far as Hutton is concerned.<br />
But where Steve sees "<i>complacent management</i>", I see a robust defence of free speech and the BBC's right to report well-founded, serious allegations that told a truth about the government's September 2002 dossier.<br />
Thanks to Lord Hutton's decision not to call me to give my evidence, the truth about that defence as well as my decision to put Andrew Gilligan on air in the first place hasn't so far been heard.<br />
You'll just have to take it from me that there was nothing "complacent" about it ... and wait until September to learn why.<br />
<b>BBC "undermanaged"</b><br />
But here's the thing. Steve's nostalgia for the Birt era persuades him that a Birt II would prune managers and invest those who remained with real responsibility and a "<i>sense of distinctive mission</i>".<br />
Hmmm - that's not what happened the first time around. At least, it's not the way I saw it. The explosion in the number of managers, layers of management and diffused responsibility belonged to the Birt era, not the years of Dyke or Thompson.<br />
One of Birt's early dictums was that the BBC was "undermanaged" - hence the bands of nomadic management consultants constantly camped on our lawns throughout his era.<br />
When I became a programme Editor in 1989, I had two bosses; ENCAR - Editor News and Current Affairs Radio - and Controller Radio 4. By the time Birt stood down I had more than I could count - at least five and I was never sure what most of them did.<br />
Departments were split-up - News from Current Affairs, Newsgathering from Output - and new teams assembled to manage them. Whole new layers of management were inserted into Birt's beloved organograms - Executive and Managing Editors - while the amount of management data we all had to collect and report multiplied many times over. "If you can measure it you can manage it", was another of his catechists' chants.<br />
It's not impossible to be a Birt fan - but not for the spurious reasons Steve cites. Birt's vision in the mid-1990s - the potential of the web - has turned out to be as important as John Reith's in the 1920s when he saw the possibilities of Marconi's wireless. Let's thank him for that while we pray for no second coming.<br />
The lesson of Pageantgate (last time, promise) for the next DG, and for Lord Patten as he works out who it should be, is simple.<br />
It has to be someone who's got the creative track record, peer respect and self-confidence to stand up to the big beasts, Channel controllers and the like, when they propose and commission something so evidently out of tune with the nation's tastes as that pageant coverage.<br />
Fail on that, and the Beeb really is in trouble. Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6406300115535023534.post-71699041219219481992012-06-04T10:39:00.002+00:002012-06-04T10:41:34.294+00:00Pageant LamentI should have known it would unleash the crazies, but there you are.<br />
The BBC commentary on the Thames pageant was, I tweeted, "lamentable" - wondering at the same time whether I was being "over-critical".<br />
I've been out of the BBC for a year now and suppose I must have forgotten what happens if you make a criticism about the corporation that's intended to be constructive. <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/stephenfry" target="_blank">Stephen Fry</a> - who has a few more followers than me - went further, calling it "mind numbingly tedious ... I'm not saying this in relation to ER II's jubilee - just expected better of the beeb". Though he did go on to reassure us he "didn't mean to upset anyone".<br />
I'm sure he didn't ... but that doesn't stop the crazies whose hatred of the Beeb is visceral and unreasoning, believe it shouldn't exist and that the likes of me and my former colleagues should be in jail. And on cue, they leapt up to bash the corporation, asking "how did Beeb get it so wrong?" or making smart comments like "they've only had sixty years to plan" and that it was "so bad ... heads must roll". And, of course, urging us all to go over to Sky which was "far better as usual".<br />
I did for a while. It wasn't. It was far, far worse. Their commentary lamentable for the same reasons as the BBC's but more so. Vacuous and borderline aphasic: at one point, one of the Sky team told us the Queen was "taking the weight off her teeth". <a href="http://www.officialeamonnholmes.com/home" target="_blank">Eamonn Holmes</a> spent what felt like hours comparing the <i>Spirit of Chartwell</i> to a floating Chinese restaurant and seemed to think we were interested in how wet he was. We weren't.<br />
<b>Slow car crash</b><br />
OBs are never easy - especially when you have absolutely no guarantee that everything is going to go to time. In my thirty years at the BBC, I was on the output end of dozens of the damn things - general elections, leadership elections, state openings of parliament, budgets, D Day and VE day commemorations, Diana's funeral, EU summits. Even the easy ones aren't very easy. And things that looked just great in rehearsal turn into a slow car crash on the day. Add in the foulest weather possible and you have something almost unmanageable.<br />
You can take issue with the kind of programme the Beeb produced, too. It wasn't to my taste but I can see why they did it. The pageant was going to last something like five hours - that's a long time to have a lot of cameras trained on a lot of boats on a lot of river. And it was, after all, a party not a funeral - so it was a perfectly valid decision not to go for a 21st century <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/7611504/Tom-Fleming.html" target="_blank">Tom Fleming</a> and to try to weave in all the other stuff, the parties and babies, the celebs on board the best boats and and and ...<br />
<b>Prepare, prepare and then prepare some more</b><br />
But that's not what the problem was. It was the commentary.<br />
Every commentator I've ever worked with or spoken to has told me the same thing. To make an event - sporting or national - look and sound natural and relaxed, you have to prepare, prepare and then prepare some more. You can't do it off the top of your head nor can you afford to let it sound like that's what you're doing. And on TV, it's a really bad idea to limit your commentary to what the viewers can see for themselves.<br />
But it did sound like top of the head stuff and rarely told us very much we couldn't see or work out for ourselves.<br />
One of the first newsrooms I worked in was in Pebble Mill, Birmingham. And one of the most important journalists there was an old hand called Barney Bamford. And one of his most important jobs was to keep the 'results book'. That was the book - in those days, a red, A4 exercise book - any commentator or newsreader who had the job of reading the football results could pick up to find those little nuggets like "that's Aston Villa's third score draw this season" or "Wolves have now gone five away games without a goal" or that a particular striker hadn't ever scored playing away from home on a Tuesday evening.<br />
Every commentator on every event needs that kind of preparation in over-abundance; most never gets used. Some do all the prep themselves, others have it done for them. Either way, they have it and carry it with them on paper or in their heads. Or, like <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/tms/default.stm" target="_blank">Test Match Special</a>, have a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tms/2009/04/ashton_joins_tms_team.shtml" target="_blank">Malcolm</a> and a copy of <a href="http://www.wisden.com/" target="_blank">Wisden</a> to hand.<br />
<b>Bottomless bag of information</b><br />
And that's what was surprising about the pageant commentary. The main voice was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/raiseyourgame/sites/concentration/getyourkiton/pages/paul_dickenson.shtml" target="_blank">Paul Dickenson's</a> - one of the Beeb's finest and most experienced sports commentators. It's impossible to imagine him going into a world championships or the Olympics, say, without a bottomless bag of bits of information about every athlete - indeed, he compares the kind of training a commentator has to do with that of the athletes themselves. It's second nature.<br />
But that's what was missing. Every boat on the river that day had a story - but we heard hardly any. Those stories we did hear rarely went beyond what we could see and far too often, all we learned about what we could see was that it was "iconic". It would have been better, mostly, to have said nothing.<br />
I doubt many Beeb bigwigs are thrilled at the pageant coverage. And there'll be the inevitable inquest that'll look at the whole thing from camerawork to concept, taking in climate on the way.<br />
But I do hope that more than anything else, they get to the bottom of what went wrong with the commentary and find out how what's usually a triumph for the Beeb turned into something, well, lamentable.Kevin Marshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05648969077266883287noreply@blogger.com9