Slashdot Mirror
BBC Buys Google News Keywords In Kelly Case
foreign devil writes "BBC has purchased keywords related to coverage of the Hutton Inquiry in an attempt to direct all traffic to their special news coverage. This would be only moderately interesting, except the BBC is complicit in the death of Dr. Kelly and the 'sexing up' of the Iraq dossier. The article in the Guardian says this is coming out of the GBP 63.5m ad budget. I wonder how much it would cost them if someone, say, automated searching for those links on Google." It doesn't seem fair to pronounce the BBC complicit in Kelly's death (unless that's proven by the facts of the case), but it's certainly an interested party.
Is this a slightly wordier verion of the 'is it wkack' troll? ;)
The BBC claimed the weapons dossier was sexed up, and claimed to have a HIGH RANKING official who told them this. As it turns out, Kelly was the source, and not only was he not nearly as senior as the BBC claimed that he was, but he was not in a position to know what he claimed to know. Then he suddenly winds up dead.
Imagine if SCO bought up key words on their suit against Linux. Now imagine they're a news outlet to boot. Kinda stinks, doesn't it?
Seems their adword budget ran out. The adword links don't appear on "hutton report" or "hutton enquiry" anymore. At least not on google.co.nz, google.com or google.co.uk.
The top non-ad links are the BBC, but that is more than likely due to the fact that the BBC is generally considered a _very_ good source of news, with a great reputation.
As for the whole sexing up discussion, I'll wait until after I've seen the report. :)
I'll go to a new source other than the BBC, since they are obviously trying to skew the news surrounding the case by buying up these Google results.
From the Sydney Morning Herald:
According to the newspaper (the Sun), Lord Hutton criticised the BBC and its reporter Andrew Gilligan over a broadcast suggesting Downing Street inserted a claim that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes.
"I am satisfied Dr Kelly did not say the Government probably knew or suspected the 45-minute claim was wrong before the claim was inserted in the dossier," Lord Hutton is reported as finding.
"The allegation reported by Mr Gilligan that the Government probably knew the claim was wrong or questionable was unfounded."
As a result, the program's listeners were given a misleading impression that the Government "embellished" its dossier.
The British newspaper, The Sun, has gotten its hands on a leaked copy of the report, from which this above information is drawn. Dr. Kelly killed himself after it was claimed he was the one to give the 45 minute quote. Therefore, the BBC is complicit.
The BBC didn't sex up the dossier. They accused the UK Goverment of doing so. The Hutton Report officially is released today, (28th Jan 2004), at 12:30[GMT]. One newspaper, (News International's The Sun), is claiming they have a leaked copy of said report, and according to them the BBCs reporter "Gilligan is effectively accused of LYING in a bombshell broadcast blaming Number Ten for "sexing up" a dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction." source http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2004041477,00.h tml
I have tried the obvious search strings "kelly suicide", "Hutton report", "Iraq war", suicide, murder, bbc, labour government, in various combinations without seeing any adverts. Perhaps the ads are only being targeted at non-UK residents, or perhaps they only start appearing after the report is published in a few hours time? Has anybody actually seen Kelly/BBC related ads on Google yet?
Buying Google keywords doesn't redirect searches. It just determines what sponsered links show up.
Independant Counsel does a report for Congress on who knew what and when and who ordered what and why.
NPR buys keywords so they can ??
You get the picture. Fortunately nothing like this could ever happen in the US so go back to sleep citizens, theres nothing to worry about.
Only the names have been changed to protect the writer from defamation action.
Actually, Dr. Kelly made some comments criticizing the government. The BBC then "sexed up" Dr. Kelly's comments and his reported position in the government in order to increase ratings and further the reporter's agenda and career. (They essentially took comments from a CIA Analyst level expert, spun them, and reported them as anonymous comments from a Cabinet level member.)
When the BBC heads found out about this they closed ranks and defended the reporter's falsification of information. Compare this with the NY Times reaction when it was discovered that a black reporter was falsifying stories.
Whether "complicit" is the right word relative to the death is open to debate and the report will hopefully tell more about how much pressure ther BBC put on Dr. kelly to spin things in a way that would preserve the BBC's reputation. Regardless, the BBC was complacint in falsifying and exagerating information, and reporting based upon a personal or insitutional bias and not being neutral (as required by British law).
The fundamental problem, is that ever since Watergate journalists don't feel that they have "made it" in their profession unless they can bring down a government. So, this type of slanted reporting and lying to the public, under the arua of nuetrality is rewared. When the politicians lie and spin, I expect that of them. They are acting like wolves in wolves' skin. The reporters, especially in this case, acted like wolves in sheeps' skin.
Before we all don our tin-foil hats, its worth pointing out that the episode of Panorama (a highly-respected current affairs programme) which aired last Wednesday was highly critical of the BBC involvement in the Kelly business. Which channel did it air on? That would be BBC One. Don't beleive me? Check out this story on the BBC website.
In light of this, it's pretty peverse to suggest that the BBC has gone to any lengths to hide or downplay their involvement in the whole affair. I myself think the Google ad buying is simply part of the BBCs shift towards positioning itself as more of a 'regular' media player (albeit with public funding), as opposed to the state-run service which it originated as.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
it takes a lot of money to buy keywords in such magnificent cases
Anyone who is interested in what they might cost can see for themselves at Adwords for free. Just click on the 'Click to begin' button. You can set up an ad, plug in keywords, max cost per click per keyword and see what your daily cost would be. They don't ask for a credit card until the very end so you get a feel without the slightest commitment (not even a name or email address is required until the end.) It's really pretty interesting.
The BBC misrepresented Kellys statements and views (largely by ommision) and created the furor that led to him losing his grip. If you are going to claim the Iraq dossier controversy pushed him over the edge, then you have to put a lot of the blame on the BBC for turning what was a difference of interpretation into worldwide controversy. REF
Nah, he was being fucked with, by both. One minute his name wasnt going to be released to the press, the next minute he it was. The press actually played 20 questions with the govt (absolutely true!) to guess his name.
Oddly, the first paid link that came up when I searched for Hutton at google.ca was version of this very story, about the beeb buying up adwords.
Wacky wacky world.
-- http://vectorvector.tumblr.com/
The Palestinians don't want freedom from Israel, if they did they would have taken the offer of a state they got 3 years ago instead of launching this latest jihad.
No, I suspect you have that correct - They don't want "freedom from Israel"... They want their damn land back! Why should they accept a tiny strip of land, rather than insisting on what they had before?
If I came to your house, kicked you out into the dog-house, and then offered you a "peace treaty" to let you keep the dog-house, would you walk away smiling at your great success at the negotiating table?
I suspect you'd see that situation as a tad bit different.
We hear a very one-sided view of this particular situation, because news outlets (other than the GP's claim about the views of the BBC) greatly fear the "anti-Jewish" label. I used to fear similarly as well, suffering a tad bit of cognitive dissonance as a result, until I realized something VERY important... "Israel" does not equal "Jews" (although it has done its best to blur that point, hoping our memory of WWII will keep us from protesting their actions that, performed by any other country, we would consider as bad as Saddam treated the Kurds). "Israel", though made up of a large number of Jews, exists as a political entity, with its own goals and means, entirely separate from either the race or the religion.
You can observe that "Israel" commits atrocities that make people wonder if they've copied a few pages from Hitler's playbook, without it meaning that you want to put Jews back in camps. You can say "Sharon should stand trial for his actions against the Palestinians", and it doesn't mean you have close-cropped hair and discuss the Final Solution while goose-stepping around your bunker.
See the difference? Try it a bit, and you might feel a lot better. Israel can err. It can commit crimes against humanity. You can admit that, and it doesn't make you a Jew-hater, because Israel has as much to do with Judaism as a philosophy, as Stalin's regime did with actual communism - Just a name.
> What exactly is wrong with advertising your side of the story.
Perhaps the fact that they're using taxpayer money to do it? And the fact that their public charter requires that they be fair and unbiased on everything they report on?
So yes, technically speaking, the BBC should not have a "side" of the story -- even if they are involved. Their journalists should report this Hutton Inquiry news in a factual and even-handed manner. No slant.
The BBC is in a unique position, and is bound by rules that other news organizations are not. Whether they've been abiding said rules is a another story altogether.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Quoting the Sun second-hand by way of the Sydney Morning Herald doesn't really count as a news source. The Sun, as a flagship of Rupert Murdoch's News International has its own axe to grind with the BBC. You can't trust the Sun's "reporting" on anything, least of all about subjects where Murdoch has a vested interest. Your link is about as convincing as if the Sydney Morning Herald had quoted Slashdot.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
> The BBC is complicit
Actually, I don't think the BBC is being accused of any crime at all. Sure, they had some questionable reporting, but this case is about the governmet.
The question is wether or not the government, specificallly Blair, released Dr. Kelly's name to the press, which caused all the hype about him and may have lead to his suicide.
The BBC has a vested interest in this both because they want it to be someone else's fault and because they are staunchly anti-government and anti-Blair. The BBC wants to nail him on this 1.
I'm not totally familiar with this case, but I think that's the gist. If I'm wrong, somone with details please correct me.
The Sun has a page online called Page3.com, which is an online version of the 'topless lady' page 3 in the newspaper. No, this is not a troll, check the link :-)
How the fuck can you be 'complicit' in a suicide in the first place?
Easy! Either you, or your wife Cherie, calls up MI5, and asked them to quiet a certain Dr. Kelleyp. And then you add "if you can make it look like a suicide...all the better".
Or somesuch.
Which is exactly what has happened. The BBC has been widely praised in other sections of the media for accurately reporting both sides of the story, particularly the Panorama programme on Jan 21 which heavily criticised the BBC's bosses for not checking the facts before opening their mouths.
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
Thats an uncredited Associated Press report, which has been picked up by several newspapers. It was probably not written by an american.
Also to be fair to the BBC they continued to refuse to confirm the name of their source even after the rest of the media knew it was Dr. David Kelly. There is still some journalistic integrety left..
Pushed him to suicide by continually refusing to reveal his name to the rest of the worldwide media? The bastards!
No one "pushed" Dr. Kelly to suicide, but lets be clear; the BBC should have done far more thorough fact checking and less sensationalist journalism, and the Government were seriouly wrong in allowing Dr. Kelly's name to be confirmed to the press (Wether Mr. Blair ordered it or not). Both sides are equally to blame for the death of Dr. Kelly.
The cretin who submitted this doesnt even live in the UK - he is an American who lives in San Francisco.
Quote : "the BBC is complicit in the death of Dr. Kelly and the 'sexing up' of the Iraq dossier."
Where does this idiot get his information from ? Yes, looking at this sentence, the BBC IS involved in the death of Dr. Kelly and the 'dossier' accusations, but only as a part of a whole, including the BBC senior management, the Government, MOD, some MP's and Dr. Kelly itself. And NO-ONE is directly accused of directly causing Dr. Kellys death - he committed suicide, end of story. The BBC's alleged involvement was to stand by an accusation against a government adviser of 'sexing up' an intelligence dossier, despite grave misgivings about the accuracy of the story.
I know news coverage in the US is poor, but I would suggest the original submitter tries to get some decent news coverage - BBC TV news (if you can get it in the US) still beats the pants off anything else you are likely to get for objectivity and editorial quality. I was also under the impression that the Guardian is a bit of a cheerleader for the BBC in general - public service broadcasting is something I would think the vast majority of it's readership support.
2 (somewhat shoddy) TV channels
8. BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC3. News24, Parliment. CBeebies, CBBC.
Something like 9 national radio stations. (BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Live. BBC Digitial Radio 6, 7, Asian Network.) I don't know how many local radio stations (Although personally, I believe they're all crap). A world-renouned website.
All without advertising. That'll do me.
On the odiousness scale of UK newspapers, the Sun is third-worst, beaten only by The Star (an even more downmarket and moronic knock-off of The Sun) and the irredeemably vile Daily Mail, the choice of reactionary right-wingers all over the country.
"BBC is complicit in the death of Dr. Kelly and the 'sexing up' of the Iraq dossier." Complicit: to ssociated with or participating in a questionable act or a crime.
The BBC have been biting at the heels of the goverment, ever since they caught a wiff of the fact the goverment did sex it up, theve been hounding them like a rabbid dog, if it wasn't for the BBC, I doubt we'd even have an inquiry, they were in no way complicit with it, they didn't even allow it to go by without being noticed.
Yes perhaps this did lead to the death of poor Dr. Kelly, but that was because the goverment wanted a fall guy, not the BBC's doing and depending on the outcome of the report the goverment could be in some deep doo-doos.
Noone seems to be looking too hard at what happened. So lets have a quick walk through the scandal:
The BBC reported that the goverment had decided to "sex up" the dossier which contained evidence of weapons of mass destruction. This is the dossier known as the "dodgy dossier" (because there was little or no actual evidence of these WMDs and a lot of fuzzy language that didn't say a lot but sounded threatening).
At the heart of the dodgy dossier was a claim that WMDs could be ready within 45 minutes. This was a major pinnacle of Blair's justification of war. David Kelly (an important intelligence expert) expressed to Gilligan (BBC journo) that this claim was dubious.
Now lets not get this wrong, after the war weapons inspections teams have been crawling all over Iraq and they have found ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE of WMDS, let alone WMDS that could be released in 45 minutes. So this 45 minute claim is without a shadow of doubt ABSOLUTELY BOGUS.
Now before this report was released, Tony Blair was talking up the dossier and the contents of it and saying how this dossier justified war for about 9 months. SO when the dossier was released he had built up a massive expectation of the contents of the dossier (which eventually turned out to be pretty underwhelming).
After Kelly's death, it was widely reported that the dossier had been passed backwards and forwards between Blair's press office, intelligence departments, and other cabinet members. They were altering the report, improving the wording etc.
One alteration that Alastair Campbell made (Tony Blairs Head of (press) Communications) was that the 45 minute claim should have much stronger wording. So it is clear that this dossier has been messed with to improve its impact and pursuasiveness. Instead of being an impartial intelligence report, it has turned into a PR document.
So what now?
Kelly expresses scepticism about the report to Gilligan. Gilligan reports that the government has "sexed up" the dossier. The government who perceive this as a major PR loss if this goes unchallenged, and which has a lot riding on this report anyway challenges the BBC on this.
So the Alistair Campbell challenges the BBC head on, makes a massive confrontation in the press (trying to bluster the governments way out of the mess). He demands that the BBC reveal their source of who said that the "dodgy dossier" had been "sexed up". Gilligan refused, and the BBC stood by him because he had tapes from the interview with Kelly so they could prove their point.
The goverment doesn't like the BBC anyway at the moment, and had openly criticised the BBC's coverage during the war for not presenting the government's side enough - I think the government wished that the BBC's coverage of Iraq was more like Foxes! (It is a joke criticising the BBC for not presenting the government's side enough - the reason the BBC is such an amazing institution and people listen to/watch it around the world is that they always present both sides of a story and allow the viewer to make their own mind up).
In addition before the war, the government had been floating ideas for what to do with the BBC when its charter comes up for renewal including such ridiculous ideas a *privatising* the BBC!(BBC's charter is renewed every 10 years, and it is this charter that allows it to operate/collect the license fee. There is always an anti-BBC lobby that is against everyone having to pay a poll tax on the BBC. )
So this standoff between Alastair Campbell and the BBC has be looked at in the context of the government's ongoing feud with the BBC.
The government get wind of who the source is (probably through intelligence channels) and they put about the word to the press that although they will not release Kelly's name, they will confirm to any press member if they suggest the right name. So the press are phoning up with lists of candidates, and miraculously some of them guess David Kelly.
So the government has leaked his name to the press, eve
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Listening to the BBC coverage on Radio 4, it is very good and impartial. The BBC is the only media service I know of which will openly criticize itself. They are concerned with reporting the facts, not their own agenda (unlike most newspapers, many of whom have an agenda against the BBC as their owners want to control all the media in the country)
They're now interviewing the director of news for the BBC, and he's admitting that the Hutton Report is very bad for the BBC and a lot needs to be done to ensure this doesn't happen again.
I'm just shocked at how much the MoD and Government has got away with... (the way they named Kelly was horrendous, openly inviting journalists to guess and telling them if they're right)
We should all remember that the Hutton inquiry is an internal inquiry initiated by the government. The fact that it clears the government of wrongdoing is hardly surprising.
Oh, and nobody is accusing the BBC of 'sexing up' the Iraq dossier. In the first case, it was the BBC who were accusing the government of this.
In a democracy these kind of diversions are the cost of unpopular wars of aggression. Apply the usual pinch of salt.
So what were the real reasons for the Iraq invasion? Two main reasons 9/11 and that the dollar is the fiat currency. Before the Bretton Woods agreement. All currencies were tied to the value of gold, after Bretton Woods all currencies became tied to the value of the dollar, this worked ok, whilst the American economy was ok. The American economy is no longer ok, America is running a massive trade deficit with the rest of the world, America is a net importer of oil, America can get away with this because oil is priced in dollars. In 2000 Saddam asked for his oil money to be paid in Euros, this scared America, because of the domino effect. Different countries pay for their raw materials in dollars, this means countries have to hold a large quantity of dollars for international trade, this effect keeps the value of the dollar artificialy high and funds the American way of life, just compare the price of fuel in ECC countries with the price of fuel in America and you will see what I mean.
Back in 91 General Swarzkopf wanted to finish the job ie march all the way to Bahgdad, haul Saddam out by the scruff of the neck and try him as a war criminal. But Colin Powell told him not to, this should be the correct question, why did they wait for twelve years before finishing the job. If they had done this in 91 it would have sent a marvelous signal to every other tin pot dictator on the planet. It might have meant Milosovich would have thought twice. We need international law and we need it badly. We should be ruled by principle, not people.
Funny how all the cruise missiles are manufactured in Texas, also funny how General Franks and George Bush jnr went to school together.