Hang on a sec. Think it through. What has happened is that a journalist
bent his evidence to fit his prejudices and came up with a story that
included a batant untruth. He and his bosses refused to back down or
apologise and now they've been comprehensively stuffed.

How often have journalists come up with stories about doctors that have
been untrue or spun to fit in with the anti medical profession
assumptions of the journo/media/soft left class? Hundreds of times. And
has anyone challenged them? Rarely. Our profession has rolled over,
apologised, grovelled and generally abased itself. The result is that we
now have excessive bureaucracy, external regulation and total loss of
professional autonomy.

At one time doctors would say that to understand medical practice one
had to be a doctor. That was why we regulated ourselves. Now we are
managed by professional managers (well not always that professional) and
our practice is subject to scrutiny not by our peers but by Uncle Tom
Cobley and all.

We now find journos bleating that only media people understand the
media, only media people should run it and it's frightful that the
government should have had the temerity not only to challenge their
veracity and methods, but actually be vindicated by a high court judge.


I say good on Campbell, and it's a shame some of our representatives
haven't been as vehement in protecting our professional standiing as he
has been in protecting the PM. So far as the journos are concerned, its
a case of the biter bit and I have a strong and delightful feeling of
schadenfreude.

Toby

In message <20041308311.154630@mesh>, Mark Pasola
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>I'm absolutely shocked, and just a little scared. This will have huge
>ramifications.
>
>Listening to Peter Mandleson on the World at One, and the several
>interviews with Alistair Campbell, including his comprehensive
>domination of Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight on Wednesday evening, I felt
>a shiver down my spine. Hutton notwithstanding, I trust such men (and
>their political master) not a jot. A free and fearless press, even
>encumbered by Gilliganesque sloppiness seems preferable to the cowed
>version which men such as these now have the power to impose.
>
>
>Which BBC journalist will have the courage to break a
>government-adverse scoop now? Do we expect all reports of
>whistle-blowing by authoritative sources to be first corroborated as
>true? If so, our masters are going to be getting away with an awful
>lot.
>
>Mark
>
>*I dare say that the BBC needs reform, but the chances of the right
>reforms emerging from this crisis seem remote.
>
>
>
>On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:34:07 -0000, Declan Fox wrote:
>> I take it from the silence on Hutton that most of you are as
>> gobsmacked as I by the honourable's "conclusions" and the reactions
>> of HMG and BBC to them.

--
Toby Lipman
General practitioner, Newcastle upon Tyne

Chair, Northern Faculty Board, Royal College of General Practitioners

R&D lead, Newcastle upon Tyne Primary Care Trust

Tel 0191-2811060 (home), 0191-2437000 (surgery)

Northern and Yorkshire Evidence-Based Practice Workshops

http://www.eb-practice.fsnet.co.uk/