[Mb-civic] MediaGuardian.co.uk: BBC shies away from Bush story

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BBC shies away from Bush story
Tara Conlan
Friday October 07 2005
The Guardian


BBC programme editors turned lukewarm on a claim by a BBC2 programme that George Bush believed God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan after a strong denial by the White House.

Just 24 hours after accusations that the corporation's news coverage was backing away from risk-taking, some of the BBC's key outlets decided not to run an exclusive story unearthed by BBC2 about the US president.

It was all the more unusual as yesterday morning the corporation sent out a press release trumpeting the exclusive in BBC2's forthcoming "major three-part" series called Israel and the Arabs: Elusive Peace.

In the programme, Palestinian minister Nabil Shaath said Mr Bush had told them during a meeting in June 2003 that God had given him a mission to invade Iraq and Afghanistan and also to create a Palestinian state.

Abu Mazen, another minister attending same meeting, said Mr Bush had told him: I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."

As the BBC release was embargoed until 10.30pm yesterday, it had been expected the story was being saved for the corporation to break and would first appear on BBC2's Newsnight.

Yesterday afternoon, as newspapers and other agencies began inquiring into the story, the White House refused to comment. But later in the day a spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Mr Bush had "never made such comments."

However, Mr McClellan admitted he had not been at the June 2003 meeting referred to in the BBC2 programme.

Newsnight decided not to run the story. The official reason given was that the running order was packed and included another story about Mr Bush.

Subsequently, the Today programme also decided not to cover it - except in its newspaper round-up.

However, after it appeared in most of the national newspapers, BBC Breakfast featured an item, while Radio 1, 5 Live, News 24 and BBC online also ran it.

But the BBC News website's coverage was distinctly lukewarm - running the story under the headline "White House denies Bush God claim", rather than the press release's headline of "God told me to invade Iraq, Bush tells Palestinian ministers".

One BBC source said: "The denial by the White House put some programme editors off. It probably played a big part in some of their decisions not to run the story."

The lukewarm response by other BBC outlets to a BBC News exclusive in the wake of a denial by the US government is likely to dismay the new head of television news, Peter Horrocks.

Just a few days ago he urged staff not to be afraid of being first with stories, as long as they were factually accurate.

It is perhaps inevitable that suspicions may be raised about any cautious reception to BBC stories that do not present Mr Bush in the best light following Rupert Murdoch's comments that Tony Blair had told him BBC World's coverage of Hurricane Katrina was "just full of hate for America and gloating about our troubles".

A BBC spokesman said: "The story was covered across a number of BBC outlets."

Series-produced by the respected Norma Percy, who was behind The 50 Years War, Israel and the Arabs: Elusive Peace begins on BBC2 on October 10.

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