Greg Dyke: Inside Story. Greg Dyke

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ much more important to me, was the e-mail I would send to all the staff telling them I was going. I was determined that the staff would learn the news from me and that the e-mail would go out before any press or public announcement.

      That morning all feels a blur now. I remember lots of people coming in and out, and lots of people crying. Most of my immediate support staff were either crying or trying to stop. I remember Carolyn Fairbairn, the BBC’s Head of Strategy with whom I’d worked so closely over four years, turning up looking as if she’d been crying all the way from Winchester, where she lived. Melvyn Bragg had been presenting his Radio Four programme In Our Time that morning and he too came up to my office and was there for at least an hour, talking to me, advising me, and reassuring my staff. They loved him for showing so much care. In the end even he got upset.

      All morning the e-mails had been pouring in from staff urging me not to resign, but at around 1.30 p.m. I sent out my e-mail statement to the staff. It was typical of my all-staff e-mails. I had started sending them almost as soon as I joined the BBC and found it an incredibly effective way for a Chief Executive to communicate with every member of staff. During my four years I refused to send out long, boring e-mails; I wanted people to read them, so they had to be short, to the point, and interesting. This one would certainly have an impact. It was only a few paragraphs long, free of jargon, and in a language everyone could understand. It said:

      This is the hardest e mail I’ve ever written. In a few moments I’ll be announcing to the outside world that I’m leaving after four years as Director General. I don’t want to go and I’ll miss everyone here hugely. However the management of the BBC was heavily criticised in the Hutton Report and as the Director General I am responsible for the management.

      I accept that the BBC made errors of judgement and I’ve sadly come to the conclusion that it will be hard to draw a line under this whole affair while I am still here. We need closure. We need closure to protect the future of the BBC, not for you or me but for the benefit of everyone out there. It might sound pompous but I believe the BBC really matters. Throughout this affair my sole aim as Director General of the BBC has been to defend our editorial independence and to act in the public interest.

      In four years we’ve achieved a lot between us. I believe we’ve changed the place fundamentally and I hope those changes will last beyond me. The BBC has always been a great organization but I hope that, over the last four years, I’ve helped to make it a more human place where everyone who works here feels appreciated. If that’s anywhere near true I leave contented if sad.

      Thank you all for the help and support you’ve given me. This might sound schmaltzy but I really will miss you all.

      

      Greg

      As soon as the e-mail had gone I went downstairs to the entrance of Broadcasting House in Langham Place, where there was a massive, totally disorganized media scrum right on the BBC’s own doorstep. I walked out through the revolving door, realized I was in danger of being crushed, stepped back into the drum, and revolved back into the building. After a couple of minutes there was enough room for me to move outside and, live on BBC News 24, Sky News, and the ITV News Channel, I announced I was leaving. The irony was that BBC News 24 almost missed the whole event because their crew was stuck at the back of the scrum and couldn’t get a decent shot of me making the statement.

      Then it was back upstairs and lots of drink and food with friends and colleagues. By then all thoughts of Atkins and abstinence had totally disappeared. Mark Damazer, whom I first worked with at TV-am twenty years earlier, made a short but funny speech talking about my strengths and weaknesses. I replied by telling everyone that this was not a day for bandstanding. I was going and they should protect their careers. I also told them to support Mark Byford, who was to be acting Director-General; he was a good bloke and had played no part in my demise.

      Oddly, it was about that time that Mark was making a terrible mistake. He had agreed to stand with Lord Ryder while the acting Chairman recorded a statement. When asked to do this, Mark should have declined. Instead, he stood by while Ryder made the most grovelling of apologies in which he said sorry for any mistake the BBC might have made, without actually defining what the mistakes were. He apologized ‘unreservedly’. It was as if he had apologized for anything anyone in Government could accuse the BBC of. It was the style of delivery that made the apology seem so grovelling. The two of them looked like the leaders of an old Eastern European government: grey, boring, and frightened.

      The statement was on the news bulletins all day and was seen throughout the world. Without realizing it, Lord Ryder had done enormous damage to the reputation of the BBC, and to himself.

      When, that afternoon, Lord Ryder was asked at a special meeting of the BBC’s executive committee whether his statement would be enough to satisfy the Government, he replied that he had been assured it would, leaving a number of members of the committee with the clear impression that he had discussed and cleared the statement with Downing Street before delivering it.

      I have since had it confirmed by the BBC that, before he made his statement, Lord Ryder had been in contact with Number Ten telling them both of the content of the statement he planned to make and that I was going. The BBC now say this was only a matter of ‘courtesy’, but it has serious implications. The whole independence of the BBC is based on its separation from Government, and yet here was its acting Chairman effectively clearing a statement before he made it. We don’t know if they asked for changes. What would he have done if they had?

      It also brings into question whether or not Downing Street wanted my head. Gavyn had reached an agreement with Blair, in one of the many phone calls they had between June and December, that no matter what Hutton said the Government would not call for either of us to go. When he watched Blair in the House of Commons immediately after Hutton’s press conference Gavyn realized the Prime Minister had gone back on his word. He told me: ‘Blair skilfully piled the pressure on, and did nothing to discharge his promise that there should be no resignations at the BBC. I assumed he had reneged. Then I saw Campbell calling us liars, and demanding that heads should roll. I assumed that Blair had deliberately unleashed the dogs against us, and that there would be no peace with the Government until we either resigned or apologized.’

      I, too, had been assured in advance, in discussions between myself and Campbell’s successor, Dave Hill – a more rational and reasonable man than Campbell – that when the Hutton report was published Number Ten would not criticize the BBC if we agreed not to criticize them. Hill had also assured me that they would be able to control Campbell, that he would be back inside Number Ten for the publication of the Hutton Report and would take orders. So on that Wednesday Blair could have stopped Campbell from calling for heads. He chose not to. And on the Thursday morning Downing Street was told what was happening at the BBC but Blair did nothing to prevent my ‘resignation’. Since then, he has let it be known through friends that he didn’t want either Gavyn or me to go and has even invited me to meet with him informally. I refused. I no longer regard Tony Blair as someone to be trusted.

      Ryder’s ‘unreserved’ apology had other repercussions. From that moment onwards the BBC stopped publicly arguing the case it had argued throughout the Hutton inquiry: that while it had made some mistakes, it had been right to broadcast Dr Kelly’s claims that Downing Street had ‘sexed up’ the dossier to make a more convincing case for war. From that moment onwards no one from within the BBC was allowed to make that argument, and yet it is what I still believe happened and I will argue the case passionately in this book.

      The real irony came several weeks later when The Guardian ran a story that said that Lord Hutton was ‘shocked’ by the reaction to his report and hadn’t expected any heads to roll at the BBC. If this is true, he is a remarkably naive man.

      My day and my time at the BBC were rapidly coming to an end. I was СКАЧАТЬ