Al-Qaida front? BBC journalist.... [you work it out]
halcombe
multimillion pound spot of bother!
"On October 31 last year, reporter David Shukman, an experienced [oh
yes?] BBC hand,"
[insert mime here]
"had no idea that his film would have such damaging consequences. BBC
journalists had been encouraged"
[sounds a trifle mild for Mr HW]
"to come up with dramatic scoops, and the new editor of the Ten
O'Clock News, Mark Popescu, was looking to prove himself. [I bet he
was....]"
And so.....
"In his commentary, Shukman said that Mohamed Kalfhan had been jailed
two weeks earlier for his involvement in the 1998 attacks on US
embassies in Africa. Then, over pictures of a document that listed
Kamal Kalfhan as a shareholder in a Congolese mine owned by Oryx, he
intoned conspiratorially:
[might be Grauniad over-egging, has ring of truth, though - who can
tell?: they're all journalists!]
"Look at the list of shareholders in the diamond company and you see
someone with a very similar name. Were they the same man?"
[I sense Chumpman fancied they were!]
"Unfortunately, they were not. Kamal Khalfan, 62, owns 1% of Oryx
Natural Resources, while Mohammed Khalfan, 28, is languishing in a US
jail for his part in the bombing of the US embassies in Dar-es-Salaam
and Nairobi."
[Oops!]
"The BBC did not speak to Oryx, which would have been able to set the
record straight, before broadcasting the report."
[Pure crass incompetence? Or fear that the facts might get in the way
of a 'good story'?]
The next time it's awards season, and the self-puffing full-page ads
issue from BH - whether the damages are £10m or £5m, you can't see it
coming out of the HW Self-Aggrandisement Budget - it'll be a chance
to reflect, give the Andrex a well-earned
day off, and let BBC journalism revel in its natural element.
********************************
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,757069,00.html
Libel may cost BBC £10m
Corporation admits Bin Laden 'scoop' was wrong as select committee
questions payouts and digital TV spending
Matt Wells and Lisa O'Carroll
Thursday July 18, 2002
The Guardian
The BBC has entered the final stages of a battle to avoid a crushing
legal bill of up to £10m after finally admitting to libelling an
African diamond firm by suggesting on the Ten O'Clock News that it was
a front for Osama bin Laden's terrorist organisation.
Nine months after making the allegations, the corporation yesterday
accepted for the first time that they were defamatory of Oryx Natural
Resources.
The jubilant mining firm claimed the BBC had caved in. However, the
BBC launched an unusually strong attack on Oryx and said it would
vigorously contest the firm's claim that it had lost up to £6m in
business, and millions more in "intangible" loss of reputation.
The re-emergence of the dispute, referred to delicately as a
"high-profile difficulty" in the BBC governors' annual report
yesterday, served to highlight one of the most serious lapses of the
corporation's strict editorial standards. Some even questioned whether
this reference by the governors had torpedoed any vestiges of a
defence.
The corporation's defence had been that the broadcast was not
defamatory, even though it had made an apology for the claims three
weeks after they were aired. But it withdrew that defence hours before
BBC executives appeared before MPs to be questioned about the annual
report.
However, the BBC appears determined to beat Oryx's financial claim
down to a minimum, rather than suffer a much-predicted financial
disaster: a libel payout of even £5m would be devastating, the biggest
in the BBC's history. BBC bosses have engaged Control Risks to unearth
as much about Oryx as possible.
Oryx, for its part, paid for an independent report from
PricewaterhouseCoopers, which analysed the amount of business lost by
the mine after the report, and engaged the services of the top law
firm Mischon de Reya.
The BBC threw down the gauntlet yesterday. It said: "Oryx say they
have sustained 'enormous financial damage' which the BBC will have to
pay for. However, their case on financial loss keeps changing and is
riddled with inconsistencies.
'Speculative'
"They have failed to provide us with anything like enough evidence to
support their claim. We consider the amount claimed highly speculative
and without any real foundation. We are fighting the case on financial
loss and will continue to do so."
Geoffrey White, the chief executive of Oryx, replied: "I am surprised
it has taken them nine months before they reached this stage. They ran
an apology after we said we were suing for libel because they admitted
there was no evidence. Unfortunately it took them nine months to agree
they had no defence."
Mr White said the broadcast had been devastating for the mine.
"Suppliers stopped credit, people stopped manufacturing things for us.
What the BBC did to us was hugely damaging. If you type Oryx into an
internet search engine now, you get all this stuff about us and
al-Qaida. I still go into meetings with people who have never heard of
us before, and the first thing they ask us is 'what's all this about
you and Osama bin Laden?'"
On October 31 last year, reporter David Shukman, an experienced BBC
hand, had no idea that his film would have such damaging consequences.
BBC journalists had been encouraged to come up with dramatic scoops,
and the new editor of the Ten O'Clock News, Mark Popescu, was looking
to prove himself. It seemed that the pair had the perfect story.
In his commentary, Shukman said that Mohamed Kalfhan had been jailed
two weeks earlier for his involvement in the 1998 attacks on US
embassies in Africa. Then, over pictures of a document that listed
Kamal Kalfhan as a shareholder in a Congolese mine owned by Oryx, he
intoned conspiratorially: "Look at the list of shareholders in the
diamond company and you see someone with a very similar name. Were
they the same man?"
Unfortunately, they were not. Kamal Khalfan, 62, owns 1% of Oryx
Natural Resources, while Mohammed Khalfan, 28, is languishing in a US
jail for his part in the bombing of the US embassies in Dar-es-Salaam
and Nairobi.
The BBC did not speak to Oryx, which would have been able to set the
record straight, before broadcasting the report. Instead, it preferred
to rely on the evidence of a "security expert", Brian Johnson-Thomas,
who, reported Shukman, had "proof" that the two men were the same. For
this mistake, the BBC has already paid out a six-figure sum in damages
to Kamal Khalfan.
Until the case is resolved, the BBC refuses to say who, if anyone, is
to shoulder the blame for what has been described as a catastrophic
system failure. Senior BBC names get twitchy when Oryx is mentioned:
Roger Mosey, head of television news; Glenn del Medico, the lawyer who
cleared the Shukman report; director of news Richard Sambrook; his
deputy, Mark Damazer, who has become an unexpected expert on diamond
mining since leading the internal investigations into the blunder. All
will have to wait: the arguments over how much the BBC will have to
pay out will not be heard in court until January.
Not long after the fiasco broke, a BBC editor said: "This was supposed
to demonstrate how the BBC could make international news exciting and
accessible. They did make it exciting and accessible. It just wasn't
true."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002