Category: News; 91Èȱ¬
Date: 06.10.2005
Printable version
Sent to all 91Èȱ¬ News staff
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I don't normally write to you about inaccurate stories about the 91Èȱ¬ in the press - if I did that, the emails would never cease!
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But there are reports today in The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Daily Mail following up on an article by John Kampfner in the New Statesman which are so utterly false and misleading that I really can't let them stand uncorrected.
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Using the recent row about John Humphrys as its 'evidence', the pieces claim that the 91Èȱ¬ is muzzling its journalism in an effort to keep Government ministers happy.
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That is completely false and, indeed, utter nonsense. There has not been a single example of me, Mark Byford, any of the other senior editors of the 91Èȱ¬, the 91Èȱ¬ Chairman or anyone else inside the 91Èȱ¬ trying to censor or soften anything.
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On the contrary, we all emphasise the need for the 91Èȱ¬'s journalism to be robust, courageous and right.
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I can't relate the claim of a 'loss of nerve' with the reality of the way we're reporting the news at all.
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A few weeks ago, to take one recent example, the Prime Minister made it very clear he was unhappy with some of our coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
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He's every right to think whatever he wants about 91Èȱ¬ journalism. If I'd thought the criticism was warranted I would have said so. In fact, I've defended our coverage to the hilt - I thought it was outstanding.
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The only contact the 91Èȱ¬ had with No. 10 was to inform their press office robustly that we had every confidence in our coverage.
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But let's look at the claims in a bit more detail:
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1. The New Statesman article claims that the Chairman called 'several executives' the weekend the story about John Humphrys' speech first appeared in the papers. Untrue.
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The only executive the Chairman spoke to was me. He did not order me to 'sack' or in any other way discipline or admonish John Humphrys.
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Like me, at this point he had no idea whether the story in the press was true or what its context was.
He phoned me to say he intended to put out a short statement saying that he would be asking me to report back to him and the other Governors on the story in due course.
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I told him that I would be asking Mark Byford, as our Head of Journalism, to look into the whole matter and in particular to hear John Humphrys' own account of what had happened. I would then decide what to do and would report subsequently to the Governors on the background to the story and the decision I had reached.
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I phoned Mark B. on the Saturday afternoon and asked him to look into the story. Mark did that and completed his report by the following Monday afternoon. I accepted the report's conclusions and recommendations in their entirety and we made them public on the Tuesday.
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At no point in the process did Mark Byford speak to or communicate with Michael Grade. At no point in the process was any pressure put on Mark to reach any conclusion or recommendation. I am satisfied that the report Mark delivered was objective - and fair to John Humphrys.
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2. The New Statesman says that 'further calls ensued between 14 senior executives, none of whom knew what to do'. Untrue.
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Other than the press team, I spoke only to Mark Byford and Helen Boaden, our Director of News. Mark rightly had a number of conversations with Steve Mitchell, the Head of Radio News, as part of his inquiry. That's it.
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3. The New Statesman says that on the Monday I 'changed my mind' about sacking John Humphrys once I'd seen the press reaction to the story. Completely untrue - in fact a straightforward lie.
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I hadn't reached any conclusion at all at that point. I wanted to see Mark Byford's report, based as it was on a full transcript of John's appearance as opposed to the partial and selective quotations which had appeared in the papers.
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I wanted to hear John's own version of events. And, of course, I wanted to see Mark's recommendations.
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4. The New Statesman claims that 'instructions' have been issued from the top of the 91Èȱ¬ to 'do anything to win back the favour of ministers and do nothing to offend'. Untrue - and preposterous.
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I'd love to see such instructions. Does anyone seriously imagine that I or anyone else could as much as hint at this kind of political bias without the British public finding out in about three milliseconds? And they're not instructions I would ever want to issue anyway.
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I am as fiercely committed to our editorial independence as any other 91Èȱ¬ journalist. So, too, is Mark Byford, whom I've known and trusted for years. So too Helen and all the other members of her senior editorial team.
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Now there are many other untruths and distortions in the piece, but you get the point. The 'facts' in the piece were not checked with us (if they had been checked, the piece wouldn't have appeared), nor were we given a chance to respond to it.
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Bizarrely, I saw the piece's author, John Kampfner, at the party at the Labour conference he refers to in his article. He told me then that he thought we'd played 'a complete blinder on Humphrys'. How he squares that remark with his subsequent article I simply don't know.
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The original Humphrys story felt like a malicious attempt to undermine the 91Èȱ¬'s journalism from one direction. This New Statesman piece feels like an equally malicious attempt to undermine it from a different direction.
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Impartial, rigorous journalism is what John Humphrys typifies and what we all stand for. There are plenty of people out there who don't like the idea of it. Please ignore them.
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We have a body of journalism and a team of journalists we can all be proud of.
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Mark Thompson.
