The director general of the BBC resigned Thursday, saying he hoped his departure would stanch the damage from a devastating report that attacked the network’s journalistic practices and unleashed a storm of criticism from its detractors.
Greg Dyke’s resignation, a day after the chairman of the British Broadcasting Corp.’s Board of Governors also quit over the report, leaves the broadcaster bereft of its top two officials at perhaps the most vulnerable time in its history.
It also marks a low point for the news media in a time of unusually hostile relations between the government and the media in Britain.
After Dyke’s announcement on the steps of Broadcasting House in London, hundreds of BBC employees in London; Glasgow, Scotland; and Cardiff, Wales, walked off their jobs and into the streets in spontaneous protests at the battering taken by the BBC in the past two days and called for Dyke to return. In Taunton, BBC Somerset Sound, a local radio station, went silent for a minute to signal the staff’s anger.
But even as the BBC’s employees digested the news, their newly appointed acting chairman, Lord Richard Ryder, compounded their sense of indignation by issuing a further apology after an emergency meeting by the BBC’s chastened board of directors.
In the report released Wednesday, senior judge Lord Brian Hutton said the BBC had been guilty of careless reporting, poor editorial oversight and a hubristic rush to defend itself without checking the facts after a radio broadcast May 29.
In that broadcast, BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan said the government had embellished its case for war with Iraq by ordering changes to an intelligence dossier made public in September 2002.
Hutton’s report exonerated the government in the preparation of the intelligence report and in the death of David Kelly, a government weapons expert who killed himself after being exposed as the source of Gilligan’s report.
Critics of the Hutton report, however, said the inquiry apparently had discounted evidence against the Blair government.
Dyke said he hoped his departure would help the BBC move on. Referring to Gavyn Davies, who resigned Wednesday as chairman of the BBC Board of Governors, he said, “With the departure of Gavyn and myself, and the apology I issued on behalf of the BBC . . . I hope that a line can be drawn under this whole episode.”