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British Sroadaz~sting Corporation Room 30D4 Television Cen".-e Wood Lar,e London W12 7RJ Telephone 020 822i 685-0 F~ 02C8576 712:
/V P,

News

From Director, News

Aiastair Campbei!, Esg .,

Director of Comn-iunciations and Strategy,
10, Downing Street,
LONDON . - _
SW 1 A 2A,A

16'h November, 2001

Dear Alastair,

Thank you for your letter of 12th November. ! should say at the
outset that 1 do not recognise the description of our journalism that
you provide . The BBC at all levels, including the Board of
Governors, is proud or' our coveraoe of this crisis .

The BBC's newsgathering strength has enabled us to report from a

wide range of sources . VVe have drawn heavily, especially on FR.adio
5 Live, News 24 and BBC Worid, on' live press conferences frorn the
MoD and the Pentagon, and on press conferences given by the
Prime President Bush . VVe have covered every-debate
---- - Minister
----------and
----- - - ---------- -- ----------------------- -
:n Pariiament and every sfa :en-ment by the Prime Minister from
Downing Street . The Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State
for Defence have appeared freqjeritly on Today and other
programmes . The Prime Minister was interviewed th's week by the
BBC's Pashto service and there are standing invitat:ons to him to
`alk to the interi~~a :iona[ audience in a joint World Service lBBC World
interview and to the British audience through a special Question
Time .

I owever we would not be providing our audiences with

L li~e rounded L

end impaiial news service they expect wera London and

Washington to be our only points of reference . As you said a'iLer the

. . . . . . . . . . . . ;2
Kosovo Cr;sis, in your speech to the Royal United Services (nstitute :
" The day of the daredevil reporte-w'no refuses to see obstacles to
gattir,g the truth and seeing it with his or her own eyes seems to
have died . But surely the starvation of pictures and the denial ofl
access by the Serbs increased rather than lessened the
responsibility of the media to try and find out what was happen 1 ng
there ." So 1 assume you applaud the fact 'that the BBC has reported
from the ou:set from Peshawar, Quetta, Islamabad, with the
Northern Alliance in a number o; locations in Northern Afghtanlistan
and in the past week from Kabul . f agree on the importance of- first
hand eyewitness reporting from experienced correspondents . _

I would like to make two further general points before Fespondis-ig to

'L h- specific issu s you raised
I - .

i fail to understand your use of the term "moral equivalence" . It is

not one that would be recognised by any of our journalists, who are
very clear -,hat their job is to report events as fully and accurately as
possible . Giving our audiences, both in Britain and around the
world, a rounded picture from which to make their own judgements
does involve reporting what is being, said "on the other side" . It is
ludicrous to imply that means the BBC s~.apports or endorses those
views in any way . _As_( .have indicated above,_weighing the amount
nf coverage of Brit,sin orArnerican statements, press conferences
and speeches against claims by AI Qaeda or the Taliban is
overwhelmingly favourable to London and Washington .

Secondly, we would never claim that we "can do no wrong" .

Reporting wars is difficult and, given the circumstances in which our
journalists in the field are operating it would be-extraordinary if the
occasional infelicitous phrase didn't siip through . However you
underestimate the scrutiny we ourselves apply to our coverage if
.a assume we do not pick these up for ourselves and ensure they
yo-
are not repeated .

Let me now address the points yoJ ra`,se . I do not propose to

engage in detail on each and every example you cite - but I will
provide evidence to show that we 'nave neither indulged ine T afiba;i

. . . . . . . . . . . .1'3

IRSF,(~ Lj-10 ~n 6
or Osarna Bin Laden in the way you descr;be -nor ',-,ave we ridden
roughshod over the BBC's edi_orial guidelines .

The BBC's Producer Guidelines were supplemented at the outset of

th :s conflict with additional guidance drawn up by my colleagues in
BBC Editorial Policy in consultation with myself and senior
colleagues in BBC News relating to issues likely to arise in times of
conflict and based on experience from the Faiklands, the Gulf' \/Var
and Kosovo . These documents were distributed to every men-lber
of staff in B3C News . Heads or" Department nave bee,i-actively
-involved on eac~ and every day since September 1 i~' - helping to
shape the coverage, providing guidance and resolving the very,
many editorial questions that have arisen. Frankly, I have no idea
who may have informed you that "nothing has been referred up
beyond programme editor"- but that is plain Wrong .

As part of your general view that we have been `soft' on the T3 f iban
you question the BBC's behavioir at the various Tafiban news
conferences held in Pakistan . Perhaps you are unaware that CNN
carried some of these events 'live' --whereas we preferred first in
each case to assess the material these events produced before
deciding-how-best they contributed to au d'sence understanding- In
------- - ---- -- -------- --------------------------
general t;~e Taiican have chosen to co-operate more with
organisations other than the BBC . Our correspondents tell me that
the Taliban do not much like our repor-Ling .

You take great issue with our reporting of Taliban casualty ciai n-is .
You suggest both that we have taken them too seriously and that
we should not be reporting them at all until officially verified by some
Coalition source . I don't agree . The T aliban's claims are part of the
story and we are righi to report the!,,- version of events with, of
course, p-oper testing, and ensAng their propaganda is not
presented as fact . BBC jourr,alis :s - time and again - have
reminded our audiences of the unverifiable nature of the Tafiban's
siatements when there ;s no other credible source to substantiate

. . . . . . . . . . . .h?
them . We do not only rely on t'-,e Prime Minister, American oTiciais
or the Norh ern A;fiance to do the debunking - though we have
p ;oviced imany opporturuties for spokesmen to do this . Our ov,rn
journalists have pointed out the circumstances in which they have
been shown what the Ta!iban says is 'evidence` and have made
clear the difficulties in veri-jyng ! a,Iban asse-t :ons .

Some examples :

® "A group of foreign ;ournalists arrive nervously in Afg'r~anistari,

Taliban troops monitoring thei= every movement . The reporters
had been bussed in to see a village called Kadarn where the
Taiiban clairn up to two hundred civilians died in a bombing i-~aid
last week. The journalists report seeing widespread destruction
and eighteen freshly dug graves but otherwise they could not
verify the claims ."
(14th October, TV Nevvs, Ben Brown) .

"The T aliban are fighting back but afLer eight days are feeiing the
ei Jects of the American onslaughf. So they are now switching
their o fensive to the propaganda front. They have invited in
foCe :gaJOUr)nal_Isfs__cJ!<Fr_s_~iuil[ll_Ilg_t'1Prl=iUD'fiL_r?_o_W 2r!d haye_DLIsSed
them to sights where :hey say American bombs have k :lled
civilians ."
(15t~ October, TV News, Jacky Rowland) .

. A question from Huw=dwards to i=ercaf Keane : " How dlificult is

it to access the truth or othenvise of (these) -claims?"
Answer: "It's extremely difficult . Principally because the Taiiban
will not allo'vv a single foreign journalist into the country to verify
the claims."
(25'h October, 6 O'Clock TV News )

. . . . . . . . . . . . 15
 -5-

® "Ur;verifiable casualty clai,ms are often made by the Tailban who

. . I ,
w on -L let ou'side,
L -s investigate, 3,j-'L -cz senior human rionts figLre is
impFessed by these civiiian accounts."
(25' October, 10 O'CIocK TV News, Fergal Keane) .

a Local residents wanted to know why US bombs had targeted

them . "There's nothing connected to the Talibari around here",
this man says, "The Americans only want to stop us feeding our
families ." In point of fact a heavily damaged Taiiban ministry
building stood nearby. _ -
(31 Sf October, TV News, Sirnon Ingram) .

® "Western journalists have been taken to the southern city of

Karndahar . . .They've been taken there obviously by the Ta!iban
authorities - and they are being shown what the Talibun wars t
them to see .-but they can use their eyes and ears as well ."
(31 st October, 'Today', introduction by Jim Naugl-'Lle- to 'the
Sirnon Ingram piece mentioned in your letter).

~ AI Jazeera TV claim -'this child to IJe Osama Sin Laden's son

voicing defiance . It's in possible to know who these children
--re a.fly-aru_ - - -
(7:'' No~%ember, TV News, Stephen Sackur) .

1'ou raise the report on the alleged bombing of a dam and pol~"er
starion on November 1't . I note that on Radio 5 the correspondent,
Susannah Prica made it clear that it could not be verified .
Television news attributed-the 6aim to the Taliban in an lrtroduction
to a correspondent report. it was not referred to in the report itseifl .
We should, however, have Injected an extra note of cau :ion .

I believe yoj misunderstand the nature of the BBC's guidefines on

'Staged `vents' . T'ney are aimed at preventing terrorist stunts (fPtiA
roadblocks and tie like) being deliberately staoed 'or the benefit of

. . . . . . . . . . . ./"o
journaiists . 7 he Bin L aden videos do no' fall into this ca`.egory_ Nor
does this guideline suggest in any waythat BSCjournaiis .s should
not go to areas that the Taliban claim have been damaged by
bombs . What matters is that we treat ma:er',al with due caution -and
I believe that in the overwhelming number of cases we have done
ex.actiy that . -

I turn now to your attack on Rageh Omaar. You may know that a
Labour fU .P . - Peter Bradiey- has written to me about the
conditions of his entry in-to Afghanistan last week . I copied yo :u my
respo~;se -frorn which you will have seen that you are thoroughly _
mistaken to suggesr that we were duped, or that we decaived fhe
audience about the terms under which Rageh and his tea m w-- re
allowed to operate .

/As to the substance of his journalism - you again object to the

quoting of a Taliban source - as if quoring a Taliban source implied
`hat we believed '~he source . I doubt very much indeed that vie",nrers
of BBC News would have been conditioned by our programrrnes Lo
equate Taliban claims with the unvarnished truth - and yet this is the
underlying thesis of your letter.
- ----- - - ---------------- - --- -- -- ----- - ----------- -- ------ - - - ---- --
The focus of Raoeh's report of the 9th November, to which you
object, was the suffering caused to some in Kabul by '-the bombing .
As such it was a legitimate piece of reportage . It was not attennpting
to balance the suffering he witnessed with the strateQic goals of the
Coalition . He did not say t~~e bombing was wrong or should be
stopped - nor anything of the kind . His co ~clusion was a
professio ;al judgement and not a prescriptive opinicn on the
rightness or otherw;se of Coaf ;tlon policy.

You attack other aspects of that night's prograMme . Mr . Blair may

not have been inc!uded in Stephen Sac',KUr's report - but we 'nave
carried the Prime Minister's remarks on rnany, many occasions
often live on News 24 (and on one occasion live on BBC 1 when
other terrestrial channels did not ) . Your description of fnat night's
 -7-

running order- which leads you to the conclusion that we a-e gui!~.y
ot bias - -curiously fails to n,fention :he poweriul piece Tiled by
Gavin Hewitt on the vict:ms of the September 1 It' attac'~( .

You cite a number of examples from Toaay's Defence .

correspondent Andrew Gilligan . Some of your quotations are
inaccurate and/or taken out of context . However, his -emarks, as
with those of all our specialist correspondents are judgements
based on background conversations with a range of sources - in his
case military o ;res . He is not voicing personal opiaion . For example
the statement that ":;n!ess there !s an incred:ble stroke of luck the
action will carry on over winier" was one being expressed in DLJ'E)!iC
as well as in private by the MoD and the Pentagon .

The rules governing our cor,espondants writing for newspapers and

magazines are that a senior editorial figure should see the item
before submission and that they should not vvrite anything that could
not be broadcast on the BBC (e.g . in terms Off political opinion) .

You asked whether I believe "the BBC ~as accurately reflected the
vieWs 01 the Muslim Community . As I told you wnen we met in
Downing_Street_ it is hard .to .find-moderate Muslim opinion prepared
to voice support for the bombing
. However we have gone to
considerable lengths to ensure our examples are rearesentative .
For example, you may recall the Panorama programme "Koran or
Country" . In Selecting Birmingham Central Mosque we took
considerable efforts to find a Mosque and a community with no
reputation for tension between Muslim and non Muslim opinion .

'Ale took advice from the Muslim College, from Islamic Relief, from
the Protessor of Theology at Birnningham University and also sought
the views oi the British Board of Deputies . All agreed the Mosque
and the Imam were responsible and moderate . And yet
overwhelming opinion froT, the community there opposed miiitary
action .

. . . . . . . . . . . ./8
Where we have found extremist views we have soua'a to ens~u re
there is a public interest case =or hearing them (for example those
who voiuntsered to join the 7aliban) . VW'e have never sought t(--)
suggest that there is significant sappo~~ for Osama Bin Laden
among Muslims in the United Kingdom . Nor have we simply picked
up the sensationalist claims r,ade by some on the size and natture
of Ealiban sympathisers . Let me cite one particular case .
On 30" October our Social Affairs editor Mali Dickson said this
about the suggestion that many hundreds of Britis'n Musiims had
gone to support the Taliban in recent months : -

if you go on to the streets and talk to young Muslims they tend to

act in a way that a ;l young people do, so you get people saying `I'd
be prepared to go .' . But if you talk to the elders they say they
wouldn't drvaM of doing ;t. You have to separate off some of tthe
hype . . .You have to keep th:s in perspective . I would say since,
September ^ 1``, we have no evidence- that perhaps more than a
handful, if that, actually, have gone . It may be before that, mor-e
I-lave done so .
(30`h October, S'.x O'Cloci< TV News ; Niall Dickson) .

On many occasions oir programmes have interviewed moder-.~,te

---- --------------------- --------- --- ------------- --- - -- -- ----- ---------------- - ---
Muslims who have been given aniple opporti r.ity to express their
disdain for the militants . All in all I am satis,`led that the BBC has
provided appropriate context'ti^rhen reporting the newswort~y
activities of what we all recognise is a n;iinority of Muslims,

In a separate letter you questioned ihe methodology behind the

Today programme's poll of British Muslim opinion . There is no
perfect methodology for any poll of course, and we were well a-vva-,e
that sampling Muslim opinion presented d!fficulties . A-tLer extensive
discussion with ICM they came up with a methodology which vve
believed to be robust and ore that had major advantages over other
nol`s of British Musiims conducted since September 11th . Because
our 120 primary contacts were generated at random we avoided the

. ., . . . . . . . . . 19

~ a G ! ~1r ~ O fly-~
obvious plt`alls of those surveys that have .een conducted outs ;de
mosques or in residential areas wi~h large Muslim populations . /-~:ry
Muslim household (with a Telephone) in Great Britain was as likely
as any other to be contacted for our survey.

You express concern-tnat people will simply non-~Jnate others with

the same view . This may or may not be true, but to skew the result,
all primary respondents would have !-,ad to act in a co ncerled vv ay,
This is irnpossible as they are not known to each other. It seems
[ike'y that any plan to shift the results in one direction would be
coun :ered by someone else-trying to move results in another . -

You ma:e three other points about the poll :

Sample size : when interviewing 500 people the sample siz~-- has
no impact on its "representativeness", but simply on the n 1argin of
error one needs to apply to the resilts . In our reporting we vwere
conscious of the margin of error :hat applies to :his size of
sample .

s Sample bias : As explained above no-one knoAls what a

rap,esentative_sample..cf_Bri-;shlvusGmj would_ba . Yes,_there_
were more men than women in -the sample, more under 35s than
over 35s and so on, but the views of all demographic groups were
similar indicating that if we could have weighted the data to a
representative sample the results would not have changed to any
great degree . .

® Telephone polling : telephone was much the best approach for

this kind of research . Street interviews are more= likely to
introduce bias, Ca- you imagine the press!ra on someone being
interviewed ou:side a mosque w'Th others milling around?

. . . . . . . . . . . .11 a

Q~t34 41004'
 -10-

You express concern about the reporunc of the international nature

of the campaign . We have repo ;-fed the role or" other coun:ries,
including Turkey, in suopo~~ing the Coalition - particularly on r-=dio .
News 24 has assiduously tracked announcements of mif;tary help
from foreign governments . Televisiorn News bulletins on BBC I
have also made it cledr :hat other countries are invo!ved -for
instance on the night or the Downing 5traet summit of European
leaders - though f accept we could have done more . I should have
thougnt you might regard the decision of the `Frost' team - with the
considerable extra time at its disposal -to interview the Turkish -
Prime Minister as an example of good journalism rather than use it
as a means to criticise our Deriormance . And you fail to mention
that the very influential international BBC cl iannefs have been
remarkably good at providing broad perspectives . King Abdul[ an of
Jordan last week was interviewed by ajr correspondent Bridget
Kendail -,,or BBC World, Worid Service and Online - probably to an
audience of a hundred rnillion or so .

You suggest that we have given too little weight to the existence of
a humanitarian crisis in A;ghanistan~before September 11t" . This is
not the case . Again, we have not only relied on government
spokasi--nen to _rake -----------------------
the case that millions were starving-before the
---------- ---------- --
bombing campaign began . We have not sought to hide the
existence of a drought, nor have we given short shrift to the
Taliban's obstructiveness . To take one examp!e - ; ergai Keane's
report on the day of Clare Short's ar-ival in Pakistan

"Now there's news of a devastating Now to the suffering millions .

According to the World Food Programme 'the Taliban has seized
half the UN food aid in the country ."

As for your general cr;ticisms of =ergal Keane's reporting - he has

been reporting what he has seen ard the above example hardly
suggests a correspondent unaware of the complexities of the story .

. . . . . . . . . . . .J i i
 I understand your depth of feeling about these issues and you r
concern that the gove-n,ren`, case is properly reflected through the
media whicn ;s why I have replied in deta;l on this occasion to fha
points you have raisec . The BBC's ind--Pendence- and impartiality is
under even greater scr~jtiny a` times of war, I have to say that I do
not believe a detailed critique of our coverage from the gevernrnent
is helpful in preserving that independence . If vve have so;!athing
factually wrong of course we war, ; to be told through the usual
channels . But I can assure you we take extremely seriously our
respons:bility in reporting the current international situation and will
contin .~e to do so . - _

Yours sincerely,

P '~(Ric'hard Samb:-oo'rt)

Copy to: Gavyn Davies (The Chair;r,Gn)

Grea Dyke (Q .G .)