[Media-watch] FW: [Pandora] Hutton Inquiry special
David Miller
david.miller at stir.ac.uk
Tue Feb 3 21:43:37 GMT 2004
more from Pandora on Hutton etc
----------
From: "eveline lubbers" <bbbbook at xs4all.nl>
Reply-To: evel at xs4all.nl
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 22:29:02 +0100
To: pandora at oudenaarden.nl
Subject: [Pandora] Hutton Inquiry special
Dear Pandora readers,
Pandora's Spinwatch compiled a Hutton/Kelly special for you this
week to point you at the most relevant sources of information
specificly dealing with spin, censorship and the related
recommendation to get rid of the UK's Government Information
and Communication Service, which will, as our new correspondent
David Miller points out, allow a dilution of public service rules and
an increase in the use of PR consultants (who made up a quarter
of the membership of the Phillis committee that made this
recommendation).
We've also made a selection from the Guardian Hutton Inquiry
website, but do go and have a look there yourself as well.
The regular Pandora Spinwatch will get to you tomorrow.
gr
eveline
1. Phillis Report Signals End Of UK Public Service Information
2. Deception with a Purpose: Hutton Whitewash Leaves Blair in the Dock
3. Inquiry calls for open government to end 'era of spin'
4. A very British tragedy - OpenDemocracy
5. Case Closed? The BBC, Blair and Iraq - OpenDemocracy
6. Ten selected items from the Guardian's Hutton site
7. Move On's 'Misleader': Bush Admits Misleading on WMD
8. Move On's ad cencored at the Super Bowl
---------------
1.
Phillis Report Signals End Of UK Public Service Information
Scoop, 2 February 2004, Opinion: David Miller
The report of the Phillis committee sounds the death knell government
information as a public service. Its main recommendation is the
abolition of the Government Information and Communication Service
and its replacement with a permanent secretary in charge of information
and strengthened communications structures within departments. In
particular this will ensure that the increasingly flimsy restraints on
propriety will be undermined as information staff will be required to
identify openly with the views of the minister in preference to issuing
information which is not tendentious. Or, as the report puts it, each
department's communicative activity 'must clearly contribute to the
achievement of the department's overall policy aims and objectives'
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0402/S00005.htm
----------------------
2.
'Deception with a Purpose: Hutton Whitewash Leaves Blair in the
Dock'
Counterpunch, January 30, 2004 By David Miller
The Hutton report gave an immediate political victory to the Blair
government. But the all-embracing nature of the whitewash means
that a spectre is haunting the Blair government. By bracketing off
the issue of the reliability of the September 2002 dossier and--not
widely noticed--whether the government knew it was unreliable, he
fails to put the government in the clear in the wider court of public
and world opinion.
http://www.counterpunch.org/miller01302004.html
----------------------------------
3.
This is a key report which recommends the abolition of the GICS.
Although none of the coverage notes this, the most important bits are
that the abolition of the GICS will allow a dilution of public service rules
and an increase in the use of PR consultants (who made up a quarter of
the membership of the committee)
David
Inquiry calls for open government to end 'era of spin'
20 January 2004, By Andrew Grice, Political Editor
A Government-ordered inquiry urged ministers yesterday to use the
Freedom of Information Act, which takes effect next January, to end the
"culture of secrecy" and "era of spin".
A review of the Whitehall communications machine called for sweeping
changes to tackle a "three-way breakdown of trust between government
and politicians, the media and the general public".
The group, chaired by Bob Phillis, the chief executive of the Guardian
Media Group, said Lord Hutton's inquiry had demonstrated the speed
and thoroughness with which information could be made available
through the imaginative use of its website. It said ministers should
implement the new Act liberally to bring in "a culture of openness".
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=482917
Report
http://www.gcreview.gov.uk/News/FinalReport.pdf
Cabinet Office press release
http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/news/2004/040119_report.asp
Government response
http://www.gcreview.gov.uk/News/governmentresponse.pdf
-----------------------
4.
A very British tragedy
OpenDemocracy, February 3, 2004
A week is a long time in politics. The Hutton report is no longer a
simple victory for Tony Blair and defeat for the BBC: it has become
a crisis for the British public realm. As the prime minister follows
George Bush in announcing an inquiry into pre-Iraq war intelligence
on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction,
http://www.openDemocracy.net presents the leading political
historian and commentator David Marquand's crisp, devastating
diagnosis of an unfolding drama:
* Hutton is not a whitewash - it's worse than that. There is a malaise
at the very heart of British political culture
* Andrew Gilligan, the BBC journalist who accused the government
of 'sexing up' intelligence information, and Alastair Campbell, Blair's
former head of communications are "symptoms of the same sickness":
contempt for the public in government and media
* 'Scoop hunting', like the political spin it mirrors, "is not an
ornament of a free press
It is a cancer gnawing at its entrails"
Read Marquand exclusively at www.openDemocracy.net
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-8-92-1709.jsp
-----------------
5.
Case Closed? The BBC, Blair and Iraq
OpenDemocracy, January 30, 2004
This week, http://www.openDemocracy.net illuminates the fallout of a
crisis sparked by the death of a weapons scientist, and now convulsing
Britain's politics and media. Anthony Barnett traces its roots in
government duplicity over the Iraq war; David Elstein endorses a new
report's forensic criticism of the BBC, but sees in its wreckage an
opportunity to change; and Douglas Murray reads a press blinded
to truth by corrosive cynicism.
http://www.openDemocracy.net
--------------------
6.
The next selection of items are all linked from
The Guardian's Hutton Inquiry site at
http://media.guardian.co.uk/huttoninquiry
a.
Writer condemns BBC u-turn on Blair comedy
February 3: The writer of a BBC radio satire about Labour today
criticised corporation bosses after they cut a key passage that
implied Tony Blair was a liar. Ciar Byrne reports.
b.
Revealed: Mandelson threat to BBC
February 3: Peter Mandelson threatened to 'throw the whole
apparatus' of government at the BBC if it refused to back down
on Andrew Gilligan's claims that the Iraq dossier was 'sexed up',
it was reported today, writes Ciar Byrne.
c.
Today won't replace Gilligan
February 2: The Today programme will not replace Andrew
Gilligan with a new defence correspondent, but has appointed
an additional reporter to probe the 'accountability' of the government
and other public bodies.
d.
BBC dossier reveals fury at Hutton 'flaws'
February 1: The war between the BBC and the Government was
re- ignited last night after a series of leaked documents revealed
growing insistence within the corporation that there are
fundamental flaws in Lord Hutton's report.
e.
Dyke to Blair to Murdoch
January 30: Yesterday's events did not just represent the BBC's
greatest crisis. They also represent the latest twist in the complex
relationships between three of the most powerful men in the
country: Rupert Murdoch, Tony Blair and Greg Dyke.
By Emily Bell, Janine Gibson and Georgina Henry.
f.
Wade: I'll 'pay again' for Hutton report
January 30: The Sun's cosy relationship with New Labour was
underlined again last night at a charity auction in which Alastair
Campbell sold off his copy of the Hutton report. By Owen Gibson.
g.
BBC buys up 'Hutton inquiry' Google links
January 26: Just 48 hours before Lord Hutton delivers his verdict
on the controversy surrounding the death of David Kelly, the BBC
has begun an advertising experiment that involves buying up all
internet search terms relating to the inquiry, writes Owen Gibson.
h.
BBC fears Hutton report leak
January 23: The BBC is taking extensive steps to prevent its
own journalists from breaking a confidentiality agreement by
getting their hands on advance copies of the Hutton report.
By Matt Wells.
i.
Phillis blames Campbell for media clash
Thursday January 22, 2004
The mood in the government media machine has changed in the past
year as a result of events such as the Iraq war and the Hutton inquiry,
the chairman of an independent review of Whitehall communications
said today.
Bob Phillis, the chief executive of the Guardian Media Group, told MPs
his review group could not have foreseen the events of the past year.
Giving evidence to the public administration committee he said that
while "spin" had not been invented by New Labour in 1997, the tight
control of information by Tony Blair's former communications director,
Alastair Campbell, had led to a clash with the media.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/marketingandpr/story/0,7494,1128933,00.ht
ml
j.
The risky business of security
January 12, Peter Preston: Have we actually benefited from the
boom in intelligence 'experts'?
http://media.guardian.co.uk/huttoninquiry
-----------------
7.
Here is article plus sources from Move On's 'Misleader'
More stuff that would have been outside Hutton's remit as far as the
UK government is concerned no doubt.
Bush Admits Misleading on WMD
January 27, 2004 | Daily Mislead Archive
Less than a year after declaring there was "no doubt the Iraqi regime
continues to possess the most lethal weapons ever devised,"1 President
Bush and the White House began to openly "back away from its WMD
assertions today."2 The New York Times reported, "White House officials
are no longer asserting that stockpiles of banned weapons would
eventually be found" after their weapons inspector, David Kay said he
"doesn't think [WMD] existed" after the 1991 Gulf War.3
(..)
and
January 29, 2004 | Daily Mislead Archive
Bush's WMD Misleading Continues to Escalate
http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/archive.asp
also
Watch MoveOn.org's new video for more on the president's
misleading of America on Iraq.
------------------
8.
Censored at the Super Bowl
Newsweek, By Jonathan Darman, 30 January 2004
You won't see MoveOn.org's ad during Sunday's big game.
But you will see it everywhere else
Kickoff isn't until Sunday, but across the broad expanses of the
Internet, the Super Bowl is already a hotly contested game. It's not
the Patriots-Panthers matchup that's causing controversy. Instead,
the great struggle of this year's Super Bowl is being waged over a
short advertisement—a 30-second spot with few words, none of
them spoken aloud. It's an ad underwritten by the grass-roots
political organization Moveon.org criticizing the ballooning budget
deficit under George W. Bush. Thanks to CBS, the network that
refuses to air it during this year's Super Bowl broadcast, it is an
ad that no one will see.
During the Super Bowl that is
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/020104A.shtml
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Pandora could not contain her curiousity and opened a forbidden box:
all the evils of humanity flew out. Similarly, the Pandora Project intends
to crack open the PR industry and spread its noxious secrets to people
everywhere.
Listinfo: http://www.oudenaarden.nl/lists/pandora/
Battling Big Business, Countering greenwash, front groups and
other forms of corporate deception, for this book see
http://www.evel.nl/pandora/bbb.htm
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Pandora could not contain her curiousity and opened a forbidden box: all the
evils of
humanity flew out. Similarly, the Pandora Project intends to crack open the
PR industry
and spread its noxious secrets to people everywhere.
Listinfo: http://www.oudenaarden.nl/mailman/listinfo/pandora
Listarchive:http://www.oudenaarden.nl/lists/pandora/
Battling Big Business, Countering greenwash, front groups and other forms of
corporate
deception, for this book see http://www.evel.nl/pandora/bbb.htm
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