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BBC Buys Google News Keywords In Kelly Case

Posted by timothy on from the fair-and-balanced dept.

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.

2 of 432 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Bah by CelticLo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The BBC didn't name Kelly. His name was leaked by the Goverment. He was subjected to Goverment's Foreign Affairs Committee on the 15th of July 2003, 24 hours later at the Goverments intelligence and Security Committee, the next day he was found dead. As for media attention it was a major part of his day to day life, there is plenty of evidence that Dr David Kelly met with a variety of journalists. "I have been involved with the press for ten to 12 years" - Dr David Kelly, FAC transcript Evidence from the Hutton Enquiry is here, with the report appearing at lunchtime in the UK. http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/

  2. You have the wrong impression of the BBC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I work at the BBC and want everyone to know that it is highly unlikely that there's any tin-foil-worthy activity going on here.

    It's a massive, disparate, semi-controlled corporation where one arm can frequently operate without the others being aware. There is the occasional shitstorm which flies up because of this (when, accidentally, the BBC 6 and 9 o'clock News programs almost entirely neglected the ruling Conservative Party's campaign in one election they went nuts and refused further interviews, threatened funding changes etc.) but on the whole the system balances out, given time.

    Hutton is a big story in the UK. I don't work in News (thankfully) but I am willing to bet that what we have is an entirely regular attempt to drive traffic to the BBC for coverage of a major story. The BBC is an interested party, but news.bbc.co.uk couldn't give a damn about protecting Andrew Gilligan, broadcast news or any other part of the corporation.

    In another situation, maybe you would have Conrad Black or Rupert Murdoch flaying the different section chiefs about contradictory coverage, or maybe not. But in the beeb, it simply doesn't happen. Nobody knows about anyone else's activities, and if they want to find out they've got to investigate, like journalists should. It's not efficient, but in terms of a free press, it's effecive.