Tom Baldwin in the UK Times - Statement shows BBC may have 'sexed up' its coverage:
The BBC yesterday ended an epic 52-day pretence about its source for claims that Downing Street deliberately deceived the British people by “sexing up” a dossier on Iraq to strengthen the case for war.So when's a reporter going to ask the BBC honchos if they have "blood on their hands"?
But it is now the BBC that appears to have deliberately deceived viewers, listeners, its Board of Governors and Parliament about the origins of this extraordinary battle with the Government.
The apparent suicide of David Kelly has changed the rules of engagement. By confirming that the Ministry of Defence adviser was the source, the BBC yesterday laid itself open to charges that it had “sexed up” the allegations.
Andrew Gilligan, the BBC defence correspondent who met Dr Kelly at the Charing Cross Hotel, first broadcast the allegations on Radio 4’s Today programme on May 29. He described his source as “one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up the dossier” about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. But Dr Kelly was not one of the senior officials in charge of last September’s dossier. After helping to draft a background section on UN weapons inspections in May or June last year, he had nothing more to do with it.
