Yesterday's Independent carried a valuable article by Ray Snoddy looking back at the lessons of Hutton. His interview with Richard Sambrook, head of BBC News at the time of Hutton, contains the following interesting observation:
That he has survived so well when BBC chairman Gavyn Davies and director-general Greg Dyke both resigned is probably down to two factors that Sambrook will not discuss even now.
It is believed that during the crisis, Sambrook argued unsuccessfully for a swifter and better apology for the part of the coverage on weapons of mass destruction the BBC was judged to have got wrong - claiming the Government deliberately misled the public - and pressing for the row to be taken to independent arbitration.
The irony was that two Labour supporters in Dyke and Davies felt they could not be seen to do a deal with a Labour government - and elected instead to fight, without compromise, on the issue of the BBC's independence.
"I think we got a lot of things right but we got one big thing wrong and there was a lot of mis-communication. Given that somebody died we should all feel bad," Sambrook admits
Former BBC Television MD Will Wyatt's observation is also right:
There was something wrong. On the day that BBC news chiefs and the director general were composing their reply to Alastair Campbell's broadside over the Kelly affair, one of those involved rang me to say, with a chuckle: "You'd never believe how different the atmosphere is to what it would have been under the former regime."
Under John Birt, there would have been a rigorous, unforgiving analysis of the issue, he implied. Now, I sensed, they were in "sod off" mode.
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