BBC admits Syria gas attack report had serious f laws
‘A victory for truth’ as its own watchdog backs our columnist’s complaint
THE BBC has admitted that a Radio 4 documentary on an alleged chemical weapon attack in Syria contained serious inaccuracies.
The Corporation’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) upheld a protest from Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens following last November’s broadcast of Mayday: The Canister On The Bed.
Adjudicators agreed that the programme by BBC investigative journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou failed to meet the Corporation’s editorial standards for accuracy by reporting false claims.
The programme, part of a series on aspects of the conflict in Syria, dealt with an attack at Douma in 2018 and included an account of the role later played by ‘Alex’, a former inspector with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the poison gas watchdog.
Last week – nearly ten months after the broadcast – the ECU delivered its finding that the BBC was wrong to insinuate that ‘Alex’ was motivated to go public about his doubts over the attack by the prospect of a $100,000 (£72,000) reward from the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
No such reward was ever paid, according to WikiLeaks.
The BBC also accepted it had no evidence to back up its claim that ‘Alex’, a highly qualified and apolitical scientist, believed the attack in Douma, which prompted retaliatory missile strikes by Britain, the US and France, had been staged.
In its ruling, the Corporation withdrew the imputation that Mr Hitchens, who has reported on despotic regimes for more than 40 years, shared ‘the Russian and Syrian state views on the war’. Upholding his complaint, the adjudicators said: ‘The ECU found that, although they were limited to one aspect of an investigation into a complex and hotly contested subject, these points represented a failure to meet the standard of accuracy appropriate to a programme of this kind.’
Welcoming the ruling, Mr Hitchens said: ‘This is a major victory for the truth. The whistleblowers inside the OPCW were always motivated by a strict regard for scientific truth.
‘Far from seeking rewards, they realised that their actions would damage their careers but went ahead anyway. I do not serve any government, least of all those in Moscow and Damascus. I am glad the BBC has now made clear that it grasps that my reporting was motivated solely by the search for truth.’
He added: ‘It is astonishingly rare for the BBC to rule against itself.
‘This is a huge development. I hope it represents a wider change of heart in the Corporation.’
ARE they trying to abolish cash? It seems that the national Covid panic, including wild suggestions that cash spreads disease, has been the pretext for a fierce attempt to march us towards a cashless society. Getting actual banknotes grows harder every day, as cashpoint machines are closed and banks disappear.
Even shops that still accept cash often complain that they have no change. A cafe near my office has claimed for weeks that it is mysteriously ‘unable’ to accept money, so I must produce a card to pay for a £1.25 cup of coffee. Increasingly bureaucratic pubs look shocked if offered coins or notes.
You may think they are obliged to accept legal tender. But it is not quite like that. This rule can be enforced only if you are settling a debt which already exists. If they have not given you the goods, then there is no debt and they can refuse your money and demand a card.
I personally loathe and distrust contactless payment, though in recent months I’ve felt more or less obliged to use it in some places. It makes money too easy to spend and too easy to steal.
Where possible, I have chosen not to make my cards contactless, but sometimes there is no such choice. I’ve also noticed that the old chip and pin system has become much slower than it used to be.
I shudder to think what might happen in the interval between losing a contactless card and reporting it. The recent increase in the limit on these things to £45 was bad enough. A dishonest person could rack up huge amounts of spending in a few minutes. But on October 15, it will rise to £100.
DOES this matter? I think so. I fear very much that the next stage will be that shops will only accept payment through smartphones, already preferred by many places. I absolutely do not want to pay for anything through a phone, so easily lost, stolen or hacked.
I also resent the idea that all my purchases are being recorded and monitored and studied by someone. At the moment, it is just people who want to sell me more things, but, as we’ve seen with Facebook and Google, it quickly spreads into other areas.
If money becomes purely electronic, as I think is now likely within 20 years, then it won’t really be ours any more. Imagine the power over you which this gives banks and the state. Imagine the problems if it just goes wrong, as it has done more than once in the recent past, with reputable major banks refusing their customers access to their accounts.
I used to laugh at the French peasants who stuffed old banknotes under the floorboards because they trusted neither banks nor the state with their savings. Silly, superstitious, backward old fools, I thought. Now I am not so sure.
My advice for now: use cash wherever you can, welcome it if you are in business. And the Government should reform the legal tender laws to oblige traders to accept reasonable quantities of coins or notes for any transaction.
A cashless society may sound desirable to those tidy, glinting people who think that all change is progress.
But to me it sounds like a big step towards a Brave New World of surveillance, dependency and a total lack of privacy or real control over your own life.