BBC exposes its own failings over Iraq row

The BBC dramatically exposed its own failings in a primetime television documentary which probed the public broadcaster's reporting during a controversy over British Prime Minister Tony Blair's rationale for joining the war against Iraq.
With less than a week left before a judicial inquiry is to deliver a long awaited report touching on the row, the broadcast late Wednesday of the documentary was greeted with surprise.
Two British newspapers - The Guardian and the Daily Mirror - described it as the BBC's "public self flagellation."
A BBC radio report broadcast last May claimed that the government embellished intelligence data on Iraq and its alleged weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the US-led war in March that ousted Saddam Hussein.
British weapons expert David Kelly committed suicide in July 2003 after being exposed as the source of the BBC report. His death plunged Blair into his worst crisis since coming to power in 1997.
The findings of an independent judicial investigation into Kelly's death are to be published next Wednesday, and could prove highly damaging for Blair, who was the staunchest international ally of US President George W. Bush in the Iraq conflict.
In a show screened late Wednesday, the BBC's own public affairs programme "Panorama" sharply criticised the broadcaster's role in the Kelly affair.
Panorama said that in backing Andrew Gilligan - the BBC reporter who produced its controversial story - corporation executives had "bet the farm on a shaky foundation" because they failed to investigate the basis for his report properly.
The government fiercely denied Gilligan's story at the time of its broadcast but the BBC stuck to its guns, prompting a bitter row between Downing Street and the corporation, which cherishes its reputation for journalistic independence and accuracy.
Panorama also claimed Gilligan had previously been "hauled over the coals" by his bosses, who had warned him over his use of "loose language".
But Gilligan reacted furiously to Panorama's criticism of him.
The paper said the show was "extraordinary" in that neither BBC news director Richard Sambrook nor director general Greg Dyke had seen it in advance.
"If the proverbial man from Mars landed yesterday, he would have been faintly bemused by the spectacle of one part of the BBC pouring a big bucket of doo-doo over another part of the BBC," added the Guardian in an analysis piece.
"It is hard to conceive of any other broadcaster, or indeed many other institutions, permitting such public self-flagellation."
"BBC vs BBC" was the reaction of the left-leaning Daily Mirror tabloid to the Panorama show.
Next Wednesday, a judicial inquiry into Kelly's suicide, headed by Lord Brian Hutton, is to publish its findings, with Blair expected to make a statement immediately afterwards.
Hutton's report may produce "far more serious consequences (for both the BBC and the government) than self-flagellation on the TV", said the Daily Mirror in an editorial.