Dyke: why I apologised
Jessica Hodgson
Tuesday September 18, 2001
The Guardian
Greg Dyke, the BBC director general, sent an email to staff yesterday in
a bid to quell a revolt over his decision to apologise publicly for
remarks made during Question Time to the former US ambassador, Philip
Lader.
"On Saturday I took the unusual step of publicly apologising for one of
our programmes - last Thursday's edition of Question Time,"Mr Dyke said
in his email.
"I didn't do this without a great deal of thought and discussion with my
senior colleagues and today I am sending this email to everyone who
works for the BBC to explain why I took the action I did.
"When I joined the BBC I made it very clear that I believed that if we
made a mistake we should say so and apologise. On Thursday we made a
mistake so I apologised on behalf of the BBC."
"There will be no ramifications, no internal witch-hunt, no disciplinary
action, no blame attached," said Mr Dyke.
"An error of judgment was made and it was unfortunate, but we all make
errors of judgment at times.
"I didn't take this action because of the press reaction - much of which
was misleading," he said.
"I did it partly because of the unprecedented number of complaints we
received from viewers of the programme, but also because when I looked
at the tape, I genuinely believed the programme was inappropriate coming
just two days after such an appalling tragedy."
"Thousands of people lost mothers, father, husbands, wives, partners,
children, friends and colleagues in the events of last Tuesday."
"Many of these were British and were no doubt amongst our viewers on
Thursday evening."
"In these circumstances we failed to judge properly the mood of the
moment. The programme had the wrong tone given the scale of the tragedy
which had occurred so recently."
The BBC received more than 600 complaints about the programme, in which
the former US embassador was almost reduced to tears after one member of
the audience explained why everyone "hated" the Americans.
Mr Lader said he was astounded that such views were being expressed just
48 hours after the tragedy.
But Mr Dyke's apology has also caused astonishment. The intervention of
a director general is extremely rare and it is thought the last apology
made by the head of the BBC was in 1996, when John Birt caved in to
Tories who had complained about an interview Anna Ford had conducted on
the Today programme with Kenneth Clarke.
But Mr Dyke added that although the coming weeks would prove difficult,
the BBC had "a duty to question, even if it makes us unpopular".
"So please," he continued, "don't confuse my apology on Saturday with
any suggestion that we shouldn't remain strictly impartial or that we
shouldn't ask difficult questions when appropriate. Greg."
Mr Dyke was responding to criticism, both from within the BBC and from
outside, of his decision to apologise to Mr Lader for what he called an
"unfortunate" error of judgement.
The apology came after the former ambassador came under verbal attack on
the programme from sections of the audience.
Mr Lader is reported to have been reduced to tears after accusations
that Americans had brought the tragedy on themselves through their
"anti-Arab" policies in the Middle East and elsewhere
Full article at:
http://media.guardian.co.uk/attack/story/0,1301,553821,00.html
Michael Keaney
Mercuria Business School
Martinlaaksontie 36
01620 Vantaa
Finland
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
