Dyke: Government 'tried to kill' BBC's Gilligan

[cal04]

Greg Dyke, the former director-general of the BBC, stunned a literary festival audience when he chose an unfortunate turn of phrase, saying the Government "tried to kill" the reporter Andrew Gilligan.

Mr Dyke said: "Andrew Gilligan was a guy of 32; like all those press guys ... they're all a bit odd. It's the nature of the world they work in. He lives on his own and he's not the most popular man in the world.

"The Government tried to kill him. Campbell hated him. They tried to get him. When he wouldn't do the deed , they basically said to us: 'Right, we are going to throw the whole PR operation of the Government against you'. These are not nice people."The reason Dr Kelly's name came into the public agenda - it was put there at the suggestion of Alastair Campbell by people from the press office in the Ministry of Defence."

Mr Dyke also told the audience that he was twice offered a deal by the Government. "They said - first through Mandelson and then through Blair - 'The deal is this. You've got to say the story is wrong and we'll say you were entitled to broadcast it'," he said. "Well, we didn't know it was wrong. If you do the analysis now, Gilligan's story was right. The BBC board will have to stand up for what it believes in." He added that Gilligan made "one key mistake" when he said the Government "ordered" more information to be put in the dossier. He asked: "How could we have ensured everything was correct? During Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein put out stories that weren't correct.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=572948

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Oh I thought this was another Mary Cheney story

:evilgrin:

[aquart]

2. What was "unfortunate" about that "turn of phrase"?

[MatrixEscape]

3. Yikes ....

I thought that dykes in the UK were trying to stop episodes of Gilligan's Isle form being aired ... phew.

[teryang]

4. "Dr. Kelly killed himself"

Yeah, sure he did. They didn't kill Gilligan, they killed his source.

[Kagemusha]

5. Kill his career, I think.

That's my read of it.