BBC gags journos
2003-12-16 19:01
London - The BBC, citing the need to preserve an image of impartiality, announced on Tuesday that it was banning its staff from writing opinion columns for newspapers.
"The changes (to BBC guidelines) mean that no staff, or regular freelance journalist whose main profile or income comes from the BBC, will be able to write newspaper or magazine columns on current affairs or other contentious issues," the world's biggest public broadcaster said in a statement.
The long-expected decree comes ahead of a report by Lord Brian Hutton into the suicide death last July of David Kelly, a former UN arms inspector and British government expert on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Kelly was the main source of a BBC radio report in May which alleged that Prime Minister Tony Blair's staff had "sexed up" intelligence on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.
Downing Street strongly denied the allegation, but Kelly's suicide, on top of the failure of the story to fade away, hurled Blair into the worst crisis of his 6-1/2 years in power.
Hutton's report - likely to be released in Janaury - is expected to include criticism of both the BBC and its reporter Andrew Gilligan, responsible for the controversial story aired in May on the current affairs programme Today.
Gilligan also elaborated upon his allegation in an article in the Mail on Sunday newspaper soon after his original broadcast.
Several BBC journalists write for outside publications, including John Humphrys, the combative host of the Today programme, the early morning soap box of Britain's political elite. He pens a weekly column in the Sunday Times newspaper.
The BBC's political editor Andrew Marr, meanwhile, contributes a light-hearted weekly column to the Daily Telegraph, describing the off-beat things he comes across in the corridors of British power.
In recent weeks he used his column to warn that the Marr family guinea pig Mr Snuffles might starve if its owner can no longer earn extra cash from outside writing.
"When our journalists write in papers, it is seen as an extension of their work for the BBC," said BBC director of news Richard Sambrook in Tuesday's statement.
"Yet columns and newspaper articles on controversial issues depend on expressing opinons to an extent which is often incompatible with the BBC's impartiality," he said.