I’m against capital punishment, but this guy makes me waver a bit. From the NYTimes (registration required, but I’ve been registered since 1995 and have never even gotten spam from them).
Subtle; like the truth? I have rarely been as infuriated at a person as I am at this guy. I wonder if, under British law, he’s liable for prosecution: malicious slander and negligent homicide or something.
Hardly - it wasn’t Gilligan who outed him. It wasn’t Gilligan who said they wouldn’t give his name, but would answer “yes” if his name was spoken - leading one journalist to list 20 likely candidates down the phone, Kelly being the 20th. It wasn’t Gilligan who did the harsh questioning, though I am surprised to see his name mentioned in this line.
Gilligan did fuck up. But Kelly spoke to several different reporters. Gilligan is the one who exaggerated what Kelly told him. A sleazeball, certainly, but not an executioner.
Kelly was playing his own game; he thought he could mix it with the likes of Gilligan and Campbell and come up smelling of roses.
He was out of his league.
He killed himself.
You play with fire you get burnt.
End of story.
Oh for fuck’s sake. Homicide? Give me a break. Unless Gilligan went and slashed Kelly’s wrist himself, he’s no more guilty of homicide than I am. An ass, certainly. But not a murderer. Kelly made his choice himself.
Let me see. Kelly leaks information that a reporter distorts to make a good story. Government figures out who did it, and leaks that name. Generally, if you’re going to break the rules and start leaking things, you’d better expect that the party your leaks are hurting isn’t going to go out of their way to protect you.
Bush Lies, Americans Die !
Looks like we have MURDERERS running the country. Or does the fact that they haven’t admitted the deception yet let them off the hook ?
Or more likely, you’re just getting carried away with your own hyperbole ?
“Gilligan killed Kelly: BBC reporter admits inaccuracy”
Wow, since you’re so keen on straightening inaccuracies, how’s about rephrasing that thread title? Yeesh.
Am I the only one who thought this was about Gilligan’s Island?
Let’s be honest here. Why shouldn’t the governmer/MOD or whoever do exactly the above?
Kelly was of position and experience that he should have known better than to make his beliefs known to reporters, without expecting that if he was caught the government would have to name him.
BBC claims that senior intelligence source says government lied. The government either says “we admit we lied” or they have to disprove this claim. To disprove the claim they have to show who said what, and why they were wrong. They have to name the journalist, then the source he’s quoting, and show that either the journalist has misquoted, or the source was lying. What else could they do?
Oh, I’m not saying any government wouldn’t have done this (if it felt it was being misrepresented) - I’m just showing that Gilligan, whatever else he is, didn’t “kill” Kelly. If those things I listed are what contributed to his death, then clearly they aren’t Gilligan’s doing. He just exacerbated a SNAFU.
Oh my God. They killed Kelly. You Basturds!
An affair in which pressure was, rightly, brought to bear on a man who, sadly, had not the capacity to bear it.
Gilligan’s innaccuracy: Kelly was a senior intelligence official, when he was actually a senior defence official with access and input to intelligence documents.
Now, compare this with the UK Government’s inaccuracy: Iraq could fire mass-destructive weapons within 45 minutes and required immediate invasion, when actually, errrm…well.
Inaccuracy of this magnitude justifies the press in all the dirty tricks they can conceive of to bring it to light.
Gilligan’s other inaccuracy: “sexed up” (I love the way that this has entered the language, though).
I wonder why Kelly did squawk to the Beeb, though, in what looks like an anti-war manner, when he’d previously written an article last year saying war was the only option?
Of course Gilligan should pay for his crimes in court. Imagine it, a news reporter exaggerating claims to make a better story. The BBC has made people question their unwavering trust in the British government, and for that it must be punished. Now two great institutions, both considered infallible 6 months ago, have been dragged through the muck; thank God that Tony Blair has emerged with his reputation clean.
Absolutely not - because then this is just used by the government to try to discredit the press. They can use it as a smokescreen, and for example try to stall out inevitable questions on just why thousands of people had to die for a war, by launching enquiries such as this that most of the public have little interest in.
Not for the first time either, and this goes a bit beyond mere exaggeration.
I agree that saying he “killed” Dr. Kelly is ridiculous, but the fact is, Andrew Gilligan has absolutely no business being a journalist. He doesn’t just stretch the truth, he lies and makes things up.
He’s the guy who told the world that CENTCOM lied when it said that US forces had taken the airport, because he’d just been there and didn’t see any Americans. A couple of hours later, another BBC reporter had to contradict him, saying that wherever Gilligan had gone it wasn’t the airport, because the airport was full of Yanks.
The very next day, while 3 ID was running that initial raid through Bagdhad, he said it wasn’t happening while Sky News was running live footage of it. Apparently he went out to the nearest street corner, looked around, didn’t see any tanks, and decided that meant there weren’t any anywhere in the city at all.
Gilligan has an agenda, and he’ll do whatever he has to to push it, and damn the facts. He has no credibility at all anymore, and he hurts the BBC.
Sexed up: Campbell suggested 11 changes
A guess as to part of the reason he ‘talked’: Because he didn’t agree with the deceit intrinsic in going to war for the wrong reasons?
But, yes, I agree with the general sentiment, everyone had an agenda here, and they were all grown ups; this was no time to be a big girls blouse.
And it’s early doors, plenty more professional (QC) led cross-examinations to come . . .
What baffles me is that the government have tacitly admitted to “over-interpreting”, “giving undue prominence” etc. etc., but have still strongly denied any allegations that they “sexed up” the dossier. What the holy hell is the difference? I realise that sexing up is a nebulous process at best, but I would have thought that placing a single-sourced reference to (apparently) battlefield weapons in such a position of prominence that all the papers reported it as if Iraq had nukes 45 minutes from London is just a weeny bit sexier than the truth.
Tony Blair has emerged with his reputation far from untarnished, IMO. Fundamentally, he asked the country to trust his judgment in this matter, which it grudgingly did. He’ll never be able to do that to the same extent again.
Gilligan, incidentally, clearly has no place at an objective news source. There’s a much more appropriate job waiting at News of the Screws when he’s sacked, I’m sure.
Tony Blair is yet to"emerge" at all. But certainly his primary branding - the ‘I’m just an honest bloke’ thang - is seriously holed. Not enough yet, though, for the PLP to call on Father Brown.
Imho, Gilligan’s an excellent rotweiller who, firstly, got a little carried away with a genuine story and then, secondly, lost his compass entirely when under extreme pressure. I wish him well with his next, presumably tabloid, employer.
I’m kinda glad I haven’t had a chance to check this thread since I started it; interesting to see all this activity, distilling some of the points.
First of all, I agree that the thread title was inflammatory. In my immediate horror of reading the story, I threw up the first thing that came to mind. Of course I didn’t mean he actually pulled the trigger, but I’ve seen the footage of just how distressed Kelly was under questioning, and then to see that Gilligan–supposedly an objective outside observer–“suggested a tpugh line of questioning,” made me really hate him for a second.
Anyway, I agree that Kelly obviously didn’t consider all the possible repercussions of his leakage, and Gilligan was obviously not responsible for whatever basic psychological issues Kelly was already dealing with, issues that put him on the verge of suicide in the first place. Gilligan could not know that his unethical spin would be just the nudge Kelly needed to jump off a cliff.
But still.
Ugly all around, and especial ugliness, I still think, from Gilligan.
That I can agree with.