We have all been following the dramatic developments in England where a former UN weapons inspector tookhis own life warning of "many dark actors playing games." This is a political story with a mediaback story. It pits the BBC and the Blair government with other "dark actors" waiting for cues offstage.
The BBC boasts, often with legitimacy, of the impartiality it brings to the coverage of the news. But now whathappens when the world¹s most respected broadcaster becomes the news. This drama is now a thriller with ajudicial inquiry already announced with the Prime Minister Tony Blair volunteering to testify.
The Judge Lord Hutton has announced he will move quickly and in the open. The BBC, which initially was silenton charges that Kelly was its principal source in a story suggesting that the Blair Government had "sexedup" an overly alarmist dossier making the case for war with Iraq now says, yes, indeed, Kelly was theirsource.
There is a daily dance underway between a probing media that seemed to have lost its spine in the"fog" of war only to find it in all the discrepancies in official pronouncements about missingweapons of mass destruction, and a public that grows more skeptical by the day. Meanwhile the government getssquirmier and testier by the hour, insisting it was right all along and that the media, especially the BBC,has got it wrong, wrong, wrong.
Many believe that this trashing of the BBC emanates from the pique of a disgruntled politician like Blair¹smedia advisor Alistair Campbell, or is meant only to shift attention away from the WMD controversy. TheTimes of London calls it "a weapon of mass distraction."
It isn¹t.
The Iraq war may be over but the BBC is in the cross hairs of a new low intensity war. Most of the Britishpress has yet to realize that this new battle of Britain is more than a case of shoot the messenger.
If the BBC¹s credibility can be seriously damaged, its global power and political impact can becircumscribed. So far most of the media coverage of this latest controversy is focused on the issues in theforeground, not the interests in the background.
There is more at stake.
Why The Attacks On BBC?
A week ago, a study came out from Cardiff University that found that the BBC, contrary to the impressions ofsome (especially those in the US who compared its war coverage with what passed for journalism on the tubehere) was NOT in the bulk of its coverage anti-war It was, rather, pro-government and tilted towards the war.A German study made a similar point.
That shouldn¹t surprise.
Led by its effective business oriented manager Greg Dyke, a partisan of the New Labour movement headed byBlair, the Beeb is a vast corporation that usually functions as a member of the establishment in goodstanding. The BBC rarely goes to war against the government of the day.
Despite the evidence in the new study, Conservatives, as well as I am told on good authority, Labourpoliticians and elements of the British military, charge that the BBC was anti-war, hostile to the Britishforces, and one-sided.
They seem determined to do something about it.
While the opening shots in their attack are being pegged to a current issue, there is a longer-term strategybehind it that does not seem well understood. Like many conflicts, this one began with a news story, and anincident. But that may only be a pretext for a more insidious strategy.
The Confrontation Begins