Britain's "Kelly Affair" – a top weapons expert hounded into suicide, a once-popular national leader plunging in the polls, accused of fomenting an unnecessary war – is a high-stakes drama, one that features a bitter institutional conflict that could destroy the long-established balance of power between the government and the UK 's most respected news organization, the publicly funded BBC.
Just what led to the death of David Kelly in July is now the subject of an independent investigation headed by a senior judge, Lord Hutton. It's a complicated case, but here's a quick review of the basic known facts: Kelly, a former UN weapons inspector, was the government's leading expert on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. In confidential interviews with Andrew Gilligan and other BBC reporters this spring, he expressed doubts about the prewar evidence of an "imminent threat" from Saddam Hussein, and allegedly said that top aides of Prime Minister Tony Blair had "sexed up" intelligence findings to help justify an invasion of Iraq.
The story was only one of many, from a variety of media outlets, that questioned the credibility of Blair's case for war. But the government seized on the BBC story with unprecedented fury. The row kept escalating week by week as the BBC stood by its reporting and refused to divulge its source, though inadvertently providing a clue. When Kelly admitted to his superiors that he had talked to the BBC, the government then provided its own clues about Kelly's identity, passing many of them along to favored outlets like The Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch, a Blair ally. Kelly was then called before a parliamentary committee, where, in halting, hesitant testimony, he neither fully confirmed nor discredited the BBC story. Two days later, he killed himself, adding even more import to the affair.
In many ways, this is a fratricidal conflict: the BBC's top management is made up largely of Labour Party stalwarts. Indeed, before the war, one of the chief criticisms of the BBC was that it was being run by "Tony's cronies." But the BBC's dispassionate reporting of the Iraq invasion rankled the Blair camp, which looked longingly at the cheerleading-style coverage that George W. Bush often enjoyed from the more supportive American media – especially Murdoch's Fox News.
Meanwhile, "Tony's cronies" have "gone native," putting aside party loyalty to fiercely defend their eighty-year tradition of editorial independence. The government responded with unsubtle hints of "major changes" in the corporation's funding and governance when its royal charter comes up for renewal in 2006 - threats described by BBC chairman Gavyn Davies as an attempt to "bring the BBC to heel." Murdoch's many UK papers have largely followed the government line, relentlessly hammering the BBC for "bias" and "arrogance" in its handling of the Kelly affair.
The odd alliance between conservative Murdoch and nominally socialist Blair has been a profitable marriage of convenience for years. Murdoch papers – The Times, The Sun, and the News of the World – command the largest circulation in Britain. Blair avidly courted Murdoch before gaining power in 1997, eager to burnish Labour's new pro-business credentials. For his part, Murdoch has long sought regulatory changes that will allow him to enlarge his UK broadcasting empire, and he's found a receptive ear in the Blair government. Anything that diminishes the BBC's unique standing in the UK media world enhances the prospects of Murdoch's own expansion plans.
Almost everyone agrees that some reforms are in order for the BBC. Its charter is renewed every ten years, and nowadays each decade ushers in a virtually new media universe. But before the Kelly affair exploded, it was thought that any such reforms would be aimed at enhancing the independence of the BBC, not leaving it open to more commercial and political pressures, as some proposed changes now being floated would do.
Instead, the future of the public service broadcaster seems bound up with Lord Hutton's judicial inquiry, which could also tip the scales on Blair's fate. The process might take months to conclude. If the BBC story stands up to scrutiny, the corporation will be in a much stronger position to resist government encroachments on its independence. If the BCC's reporting turns out to have been "sexed up" in its own right, on the other hand, the government "heel" of reform may come down hard. And somewhere, Rupert Murdoch will be smiling.
