By Jo Best, 28 January 2004 17:25
NEWS With the BBC-bashing Hutton Report now out in the open, the Beeb is reported to have been cashing in on the flood of people searching for the latest online news about the report with some rather nifty internet footwork.
While the BBC has certainly had its part to play in the affair, it seems that the Beeb wants to make the best of a bad situation, courtesy of search leader Google. Auntie has taken a leaf out of the book of big business and decided to do a spot of self-promotion via paid-for links on Google.
The BBC has been buying up terms like "Hutton report" for Google sites in Britain and the US, so if the terms are entered into the search engine, the primary results link to BBC Online's news coverage of the report.
This is the first time the BBC has tried out such an experiment with advertising and hopes to get more users clicking through to the news site for the first time. If the Hutton experiment goes down well, then we can expect to see similar advertising drives rolling out on sport and other news subjects, according to The Guardian.
While the BBC has been cleared of any responsibility for weapons expert Dr David Kelly's death, the move to exploit a situation that the corporation had a part in revealing in an "unfounded" report that the dossier on Iraq's weapons potential had been "sexed up" might strike some as in being in bad taste.
The BBC was not available for comment.
Comments
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1. John maher
I would describe Hutton's report as decidedly myopic, he sidestepped most of the real questions that people are interested in - WMD and 45 mins to mention two. I was interested to see that a newspaper survey gave more support to the Beeb still than to the government. Another comment from someone else was that the same whitewash was given to the Profumo affair ...
2. Chris Stanton
Can anybody explain to me, despite the fact that Andrew Gilligan got the bulk of his story correct, why is the BBC in the firing line when it so obvious that 45 minute claim was grossly exagerated and it only applied to battlefield munitions and not WMD's.
3. anonymous
Decidedly Myopic? Personally I'd describe the Hutton Report as a large bucket of white paint and a 5-inch brush.
To quote (or possibly paraphrase if my memory is faulty) Sir Humphrey Appleby, "It's the first rule of Govenment, Minister: Never set up an enquiry unless you are absolutely sure what it's going to find"
As to the BBC buying adevertising in this manner, you might have thought they'd want to keep their heads down, but I guess "There's no such thing as bad publicity"
4. bob
Wot???
With MY licence money???
A typical BBC waste.
Time for change!!
5. anonymous
So everything the government did was ok, but everything done by everyone else (including Dr Kelly himself) was wrong in some way?? Seems a little unlikely doesn't it?? It doesnt take a fortune teller to predict that once the inital fuss dies down, no-one will believe a word that Lord Hutton has written and Tony Blair will have to answer the same questions all over again.
6. Richard Peters
The 'establishment' have appeared as squeaky clean from THEIR Hutton report findings and have even demanded an apology from their many detractors. What a surprise! The BBC however were heavily criticised for breaching national security and Gavyn Davies has walked the plank as a result. In my opinion the BBC reports on the Iraq affair have always been far more accurate and truthful than the government's version. Maybe that was what the Beeb really did wrong?
7. Mark Hosey
As far as I can tell the Hutton inquiry only really addressed its self to the behaviour of the BBC and the journalist(s) responsible for questioning the governments handling of Mr Kelly and his part in giving the government some pretext to wage a war on Iraq. Unfortunately the BBC (and the rest of us) has been suckered into this diversionary argument.
If for any reason a number of people die as a result of some action or inaction by an organisation, a group of people or an individual, some authority is normally appointed to investigate, determine responsibility and hold to account those deemed responsible (amongst other things). Here we have two governments who presented a number of claims and arguments in favour of waging war on Sadam and his cronies. I have no doubt that these arguments were based on some (for want of a better word) inteligence received by these governments and, shall we say translated into a form palettable to the general public in order to obtain their support for their subsequent actions.
However, since then it has been generally accepted by almost everyone, even Bush, that all the inteligence disclosed to the public was a load of tosh (there were no WoMD, all research into WoMD were dicontinued long before the conflict, etc). What I want to know is who was responsible for colating and submitting the corrupt and inaccurate inteligence. Whoever they are, they are in my opinion responsible for the needless deaths of a great number of people and I accuse them of gross incompetance. I assume they are still working for either the government, the civil service, the inteligence agency or the military, if so I feel they should be made to account for their actions.
8. Arthur Riding
I was truly amazed at the comment 'The BBC's website is unquestionably the best news site in the world...' This is so far from the truth as to be
almost laughable. It just shows how deeply the cancer of a culture of lies
and deceit from our mass media has entered the public consciousness.
For the past decade we have had to face an ever increasing degeneration of news reporting by an increasingly corrupt and manipulative corps of journalists. The only criteria is how much hysteria and despair can
be generated in order to persuade people to buy newspapers/magazines or to increase circulation or viewing figures. Truth is nowhere in the equation, it is nowadays nearly entirely lies dressed up, laughingly, as
'speculation!!! The mass media in the Western World is now more powerful
than any government and it is un-elected and has no intention of being
responsible for its own actions. The only saving grace is that the mass
media is not completely homogeneous, though there are not very many players!
Admittedly the BBC is not the worst player in the pack by any means but just a brief look at any news channel will enable anyone with an open mind to see how they are pushing people's views in a particular direction with virtually no attempt at balance and certainly no attempt whatsoever at checking that a statement is true before it is broadcast. If someone else says something, it is treated as being in the public domain and can be broadcast to the far corners of the world however much a lie or an 'extension' of the truth it may be.
The BBC most definitely DOES need to be shaken up root and branch and the vast majority of its political journalists sacked. What this country needs
are people who will present balance and accuracy in what used to be a great British institution, the BBC, but which clearly is not so any longer.