Lord Hutton has published an article on media reaction to his report.

Let’s ignore the fact that his footnotes on page one spell Freedland as Friedland. Typo!

He’s obviously one unhappy bunny. Which is a shame. I teach the Hutton Inquiry to postgraduate students. And I happen to think – in hindsight – that he did a pretty good job.*

Hutton is about the most instructive lesson students could receive in how to get into trouble.

Starring:

A reporter who puts stories up late in the day (he’d been sitting on it for a week) and then sends them in under the wire, so they get minimum editorial scrutiny.

A live programme dominated by its main presenter’s genius for extemporaneous verbal assault, but for whom ‘editorial management’ are somehow made accountable.

And an editorial command chain that is overstretched and out of touch in an organization where management means policing internal rivalries and fending off the outside world.

The most compelling quote in the whole inquiry came from Susan Watts’ testimony – it’s a transcript of what Kelly told her. Given how many people Kelly spoke to, what’s the betting it’s pretty much what he told Gilligan?

“… there were lots of people saying that – I mean it was an interesting week before the dossier was put out because there were so many things in there that people were saying well … we’re not so sure about that, or in fact they were happy with it being in but not expressed the way that it was, because you know the word-smithing is actually quite important and the intelligence community are a pretty cautious lot on the whole but once you get people putting it/presenting it for public consumption then of course they use different words. I don’t think they’re being wilfully dishonest, I think they just think that that’s the way the public will appreciate it best. I’m sure you have the same problem as a journalist, don’t you, sometimes you’ve got to put things into words that the public will understand.”

Let’s hope for the sake of Gilligan’s conscience, it is not.

*Of course, I happen to wish the government had presented a realistic case to Parliament and the public about the limited options available to a bit-part player on the international stage. If you want a reminder of how important Britain was in the run up to war, check Bob Woodward’s books for index references to Tony Blair.