The three-hour radio current affairs program, Today, ran every morning from 6-9 a.m. The long-established program had a faithful following. It featured a mixture of newscasts, interviews with newsmakers, reports, and features. Its hosts were respected public figures. John Humphrys especially was known for his authoritative, sometimes combative, on-air persona.

In 1998, Today had taken on a different, more aggressive, character under a new editor, Rod Liddle. Today, Liddle felt, was dull. “The BBC has never been well known for breaking its own stories, and there was always an intense suspicion within the Corporation of any journalists who did,” Liddle said later. ^[14] He cut back on the number of producers and instead hired more reporters who would be relentless in their pursuit of stories exclusive to the BBC—and Today. However, Liddle left the BBC in September 2002 after a disagreement with his editors. ^[15]

Liddle’s approach on Today had alienated some of the very powerbrokers his program sought to interview. Prime Minister Tony Blair was one; after 2001, he refused to appear on Today. But Liddle’s philosophy did goad editors to consider just what the BBC meant by original journalism. Did it mean in-depth interviews, or analysis, or exclusive stories? Sambrook says he agreed with Liddle’s goals, but not his methods. “I had the objective that said we should be delivering original journalism,” muses Sambrook, “but not necessarily scoops.” BBC coverage had to be distinctive, insists Sambrook.

My point was if we simply do the same as the commercial channels and the newspapers do, then why have the BBC?... There’s no point in having the BBC publicly funded if we don’t do something that’s different.

Kevin Marsh took over as editor of Today in December 2002. He immediately confronted the challenges of covering the lead-up to and invasion of Iraq in March 2003 by the United States and its “coalition of the willing”—chief among them Britain. The war was highly unpopular in Britain; upwards of a million people took to the streets in protest. The government was not happy with the BBC’s war coverage, claiming that it was biased and full of editorial comment. ^[16] The BBC protested that it was giving a “balanced picture.” ^[17]

Gilligan. One of the reporters the BBC sent to Iraq was Andrew Gilligan , who had joined Today in 1999 as defense and diplomatic correspondent. Gilligan had earlier been the Sunday Telegraph defense reporter. “I recruited Gilligan,” Liddle said, “because we wanted Today to be able to compete with Fleet Street on its own terms.” ^[18]

Gilligan acquired a reputation as intelligent and daring, though his editors felt he sometimes overreached. He inspired the ire of the Blair government in November 2000, when it dubbed him “Gullible Gilligan” for a story on a draft EU constitution. ^[19] But Gilligan was excellent at ferreting out unusual, colorful stories about the secretive defense establishment and broader arms community. On one occasion, he entrapped an arms salesman into offering to sell him land mines, which were banned in Britain—and then reported on it.

In Iraq, Gilligan wrote some powerful stories in the wake of the invasion about ordinary Iraqis and the chaos that had engulfed their lives. The government was again incensed, and complained to the BBC, when Gilligan asserted that Iraqis were more fearful under the US-led coalition than under Saddam. Back in London, Today Editor Marsh appreciated Gilligan’s enterprise and energy, but also learned to monitor him for overstatements. In one example, Gilligan reported that British troops in Iraq had dysfunctional radios. “You got the impression, listening to the story, that no servicemen had a working radio. In fact, it was a tiny number,” says Marsh. “I was always very, very careful to read absolutely everything” Gilligan reported. ^[20] But most of Gilligan’s work was fine.