News Search Search this site or the web powered by FreeFind Site search Web search Story archive		14-8-2003 Scotsman The Hutton Inquiry: The complaints that strained a relationship to breaking point By Gethin Chamberlain Defence Correspondent THE BBC and Alastair Campbell enjoyed an uncomfortable working relationship, Lord Hutton's inquiry heard yesterday, with Mr Campbell bombarding the corporation with letters of complaint about its coverage. A flavour of the regard in which they held each other could be seen in one letter of complaint from Mr Campbell, headed "Catalogue of Lies" and in an e-mail from the editor of Radio 4's flagship Today programme, Kevin Marsh, who described Mr Campbell as "bonkers". Details of the exchanges and the fractious nature of the relationship between the two sides - which is no secret - emerged in evidence from the BBC's director of news, Richard Sambrook. James Dingemans QC, the counsel to the inquiry, drew laughter from the courtroom when he said he had no intention of ploughing through every letter of complaint from Mr Campbell, and Mr Sambrook agreed there was a history of complaints. Mr Dingemans highlighted a letter from Alastair Campbell questioning the BBC's practice of taking television material from Iraqi broadcasters, followed by another complaint, this time about an Andrew Gilligan report from Iraq. Mr Sambrook said: "We, of course, take any letter from Downing Street seriously but we have to look very carefully at exactly what is being complained about and compare it to what we were broadcasting." The hearing was told that Mr Campbell complained about another Gilligan report from Baghdad, for News 24, which contained the words "more rubbish from Centcom". Mr Sambrook said he agreed that phrase was unacceptable and spoke to Gilligan about it, saying: "Occasionally he needed to be more careful - even under the circumstances which he was reporting from Baghdad, which were of considerable duress - of his use of language." A letter from Downing Street complaining about the BBC's coverage from Afghanistan was headlined "Catalogue of Lies". However, the already strained relationship reached breaking point when Mr Campbell wrote to complain about Gilligan's reports on the government's dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Mr Campbell accused Gilligan of "irresponsible reporting of what he claims to be information from intelligence sources" and claimed that he "continued to display an extraordinary ignorance about intelligent issues". Mr Sambrook said the complaint had been taken seriously, but an e-mail from the Today editor Kevin Marsh to Stephen Mitchell, the head of BBC Radio News, showed that not everyone shared that approach. "I am more convinced than I was before that he is on the run or gone bonkers or worse," Mr Marsh wrote. But despite Mr Gilligan's own admission that his choice of words in one of his reports had not been perfect, Mr Sambrook insisted that the BBC stood by its story. Mr Sambrook also rejected claims made by the Newsnight reporter Susan Watts that BBC bosses had tried to "mould" her story to corroborate that written by Gilligan.
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