By Saturday, June 28, the British press was full of headlines about the stand-off between the BBC and Campbell. Sambrook, for one, was dismayed at the turn matters had taken. He and Dyke were resolved to defend the BBC against unjust attack, and the vitriol had become unprecedented. “I had no doubt that this was an attack on the independence of the BBC as an institution,” says Sambrook. BBC Board Chair Davies concurred: “I took this as an attack on the impartiality of the BBC and the integrity of the BBC, done with great vigor.” ^[48] As Radio News Chief Mitchell observes:

This is between the government and a national institution. It’s incredibly high profile. I think it therefore goes atomic early on, and the stakes are so high... This was the government’s reputation at stake. This was the future of the BBC and its independence at stake. As both sides perceived it, of course.

But how could matters continue in this vein? Prime Minister Blair, the BBC heard unofficially, was uncomfortable with the situation. Nor would the BBC benefit from the mudslinging on both sides. What did Campbell want—resignations at the BBC? For that matter, what did the BBC want? For Blair to fire Campbell? Finally, while no threats had been made, it was the fact that the government controlled the BBC’s funding, and the broadcaster’s charter renewal process would begin shortly. Sambrook felt obliged to take a close look at what alternatives to escalation the BBC might have.

Call board? One choice was for Dyke and Sambrook to ask the board of governors for a statement of support. But the board was not scheduled to meet again until July 17. That was too far in the future. To be effective, Chairman Davies would have to summon the governors for an emergency meeting—an action historically reserved for only the gravest matters. On the other hand, with the BBC’s independence and editorial integrity at stake, a statement could send a strong message that the BBC governors fully supported the management.

But there was a risk. The board might find that the evidence did not support a statement. In that event, BBC management would be at the least embarrassed, and perhaps obliged to resign. The board’s role, clarifies International Division Director Byford, was to “defend the independence of the BBC and its distance from government... The role of the governors is certainly not to say, ‘Well, anything you say Greg, is right.’ Or ‘we’ve got to get out there and just defend it.’” Moreover, notes Sambrook, “I knew that some of the governors were critical of Andrew Gilligan as a reporter, and his track record. Some of them felt there was an overly aggressive culture on the Today program, in other words that this had been an accident waiting to happen.”

Listen to Sambrook on the Today program:
Length: 39 sec

It was also possible that the board would recuse itself. It had a strong incentive to do so, because the board not only exercised oversight over the BBC; it was also a court of appeals for complaints to the Program Complaints Unit. Should Campbell choose—as he had every right to do even at this late date--to lodge an official complaint, board involvement in the altercation could invalidate it as a neutral panel of judges.

Process. Sambrook considered some of the BBC’s other options. One was to instruct Campbell more forcefully than Sambrook had been able to so far to follow the established process for complaints, and assure him it would rise immediately to the board of governors’ level. The case was straightforward: Campbell had made complaints to the BBC. Sambrook’s replies were unsatisfactory to Campbell. “He has the right for that complaint to be fast-tracked to our own governors’ complaints committee... He can go for independent assessment,” says Byford.

You’re not telling him, ‘get lost.’ Nor are you telling him, ‘Yes, we agree.’ You’re saying we believe that’s what should happen now, and we can fast track it to that level.

Back channel. A second possibility was to open a back channel to the government in an effort to settle the matter privately. “One of the options you have is to open a back channel and try and do a deal, and sort it out,” remarks Sambrook. The BBC leadership knew Prime Minister Blair as a strong supporter of the broadcaster. They did not think he relished this fight. There was even a candidate for go-between: Peter Mandelson, a Labour member of parliament and close ally of Blair’s. “I’m not sure we should be doing deals with the government,” concedes Sambrook. “That’s not what an independent broadcaster should be about. But the real politics of it is that sometimes you have to find ways out of corners, and we were all in a corner.” Sambrook adds that “I certainly raised [this option] with both Greg [Dyke]and Gavin [Davies].”

The advantages are that by the time Alastair had gone public, you had him on the government side and I suppose me fronting for Greg and Gavin, in a very dug-in position. The option is to have a sensible conversation between the two parties with people who aren’t as dug in and publicly committed, that say ‘come on, this is going to damage both of us... Let’s just sort out how we get out of this mess.’ If you could find cooler heads on both sides to do that, it’s quite possible you could come to an agreement.

Davies, however, was skeptical about putting in a personal call to the prime minister. His close personal ties to Blair made it all the more difficult to contemplate. He was reluctant “to pick up the phone to the Prime Minister directly because I had felt that this was a public conflict, there was public interest in it, and we should not seek to settle it in a clandestine manner.” ^[49]

Investigate. Finally, the BBC could call a time out. They could appoint an inquiry, either internal or using a distinguished outside figure, to examine the complaints against the BBC and issue an opinion. Sambrook sums up this approach as: “Let’s just stop the clock. We’re going to get a third party to come and arbitrate in some way on this.” An inquiry, he says, “concedes to the government that there’s something here that needs to be properly looked at, non-defensively... That could have de-escalated it, bought some time, everyone can calm down and think about what‘s going on, what the issues are and what the complexity is, and sort themselves out.”

There was support within the BBC for this tactic. “The key is always to try and take the temperature down, but not do it in such a way that you look like you’re backing down,” says Radio 4 Controller Boaden.

You just needed to say, as of this point, we’re standing by our journalism, but clearly we want to find out if it’s right. This is a very serious allegation... You let everybody calm down. You let the testosterone levels fall. And then you can find out what really happened... They could have got someone from outside who had no vested interest in the news being right.

Radio News Director Mitchell agrees. “Arguments were being played out in faxes, rather than face to face,” he remembers. “Nobody [was saying] let’s look at the whole thing. Let’s take every word that we broadcast. Let’s be forensic about this.” He adds:

The trouble with journalists is, we live by short-term deadlines. We live by snap decisions, broadcast journalists especially. Our next deadline is only hours away. You have to go with what you’ve got. We live by that. We spend our careers doing it. It’s not surprising, therefore, when we’re into a confrontation like that, we respond in the same quick, instinctive way.

But others argued that, in the prevailing climate of hostility and distrust, an inquiry would have allowed the government to claim victory, implicitly turning the very fact of an inquiry into an admission of BBC guilt. Sambrook recalls that the affair had escalated to the point that the government could see only “black or white, all or nothing.” Campbell and Blair, he feared, would accept nothing than an abject apology: “This story is 100 percent wrong, it’s a mountain of lies, take the whole thing back, roll over and beg, BBC.“ That was unacceptable. As Sambrook recalls: “We believed we were right, and that we had to stand our ground.”