Friday, 30 January , 2004, 02:42

London, UK: The findings of the Hutton report into the death of Iraq weapons expert David Kelly which exonerated the British government and castigated the BBC constitutes a threat to press freedom, critics said on Thursday.

"The report is selective, grossly one-sided and a serious threat to the future of investigative journalism," said Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of National Union of Journalists.

The BBC was badly mauled in the report which was drawn up by one of Britain's leading judges Barry Hutton and which investigated the circumstances that led up to Kelly's death.

The inquiry looked into allegations by one of the BBC's journalists that the government had deliberately embellished a report on the extent of Iraqi weapons or mass destruction - knowing the information to be false - to justify an attack on Saddam Hussein.

The source for Andrew Gilligan's report was later revealed to be Kelly.

The findings of the Hutton report totally cleared the government, and the judge's ire was trained on the BBC, which received a devastating dressing down for organisational failures at just about every level.

"People recognise that mistakes were made but the main facts of what Gilligan reported were true ... that is the most important thing and that is what the government wants to hide," said Barry White, national organiser for the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom.

"The report is not balanced at all. It's a whitewash for the governement and a tar and feathering for the BBC," he said.

The governor of the BBC, Gavyn Davies, who resigned almost immediately after Hutton's findings were made public, admited certain key allegations reported by Andrew Gilligan were wrong, but also issued a note of caution.

He said that criticisms of the BBC did not take "sufficient account of the extenuating circumstances" created by government attacks on the BBC during the Iraq war, when it was accused of having an "anti-war agenda".

"Are his conclusions on restricting the use of unverifiable sources in British journalism based on sound law and, if applied, would they constitute a threat to the freedom of the press in this country?," he asked.

"I am sure that these questions will be widely debated." Dear said that Hutton's conclusion that the government could not be criticised for allowing David Kelley's name to become public as the source of the leak dealt a severe blow to the principle that a journalist always protected his sources.

"That means people who would expose corruption or injustice are less likely to come forward for fear of what could happen to them," he said.

"You also have journalists who fear that the kind of situation that Andrew Gilligan has faced could happen to them," he added.

He said this was an especially dangerous development at a time when two journalists in Northern Ireland were being threatened with jail terms for their refusal to reveal their sources for a report over the controversial Bloody Sunday killings.

British journalist Alex Thomson and his colleague from Northern Ireland Lena Ferguson investigated the events of Bloody Sunday in January 1972, when British soldiers shot dead 14 people during a civil rights march in the city of Londonderry.

An initial inquiry in 1972 absolved the British army. But the two journalists produced a television documentary in 1997 that revealed new elements about the killings which led to a second inquiry.

White said journalists should not give in to bullying by governments who were using the inquiry to settle their own scores, but he also criticised the BBC.

"The management of the BBC is crumbling where it should be standing up and defending its journalists," he said.

"Most of the public and the journalists do not think the findings are credible. The fact that it put only the blame on one side makes people very suspicious about it," he added.

A poll in London evening newspaper the Evening Standard published on Thursday showed that 56 percent of those questioned judged the Hutton report "not balanced" while only 36 percent said it was "convincing."