Greg Dyke: My Part in His Downfall

Greg Dyke served as Director-General of the BBC—a hugely influential position in British culture—from 2000 to 2004. His final days at the BBC were consumed with the uproar over the BBC’s outing of Ministry of Defense employee David Kelley as a confidential source for a series of damning stories on the Labour government’s misuse of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War. Soon after being publicly named, Kelley committed suicide, and that action prompted a government investigation, led by Lord Hutton, which ultimately exonerated the government but called the BBC’s editorial process “defective.” In the wake of the Hutton Enquiry, Dykes resigned. Chris Moore worked under Dykes at the BBC in that period, and this book offers a diary-style account of the events and their aftermath, as seen from the inside. A compelling account of a complicated clash between journalism, government secrecy, and the public interest, it will be of interest to all who work on or in the media.