The BBC now lives in terror, which is bad for the public but good for the PRs

ere's a bit of a puzzle. John Humphrys, the presenter of Radio Four's Today programme, has apparently

— threatened to resign because his bosses bowdlerised an interview he had carried out with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

Mr Humphrys's interview, which ran on the programme last week, was recorded an hour before it was transmitted. Between recording and transmission, it was monkeyed with. A large and very interesting chunk of it was cut out, on the orders of the editor of the Today programme, Kevin Marsh.

The bit Kevin decided should be cut out dealt with the moral rectitude of the war waged against Iraq. 'Was it an immoral war?' John asked the spiritual leader of our nation. By way of an answer, Rowan Williams paused in thought for a full 12 seconds. Now, if you're a radio interviewer, or producer, or editor, you will immediately recognise that such a prolonged period of silence in response to a taxing question is more significant — and revelatory — than 12 minutes of Gordon Brown continually jabbering. Or, indeed, lain Duncan Smith laughing like a doomed hyena, as he did last time he was on the show.

But for some reason they cut it out, along with everything else Williams said about Iraq which, incidentally — couched in appropriately delicate, thoughtful language — seemed to suggest that yes, the war was immoral.

Humphrys was very cross indeed about this and shouted long and hard down the telephone to his editor. He threatened to resign. Later, when the press had somehow got hold of the contretemps, presumably through the offices of a Today staffer disgusted with the editorial decision, the corporation put out a statement saying that the Today programme had agreed in advance with Lambeth Palace that the war in Iraq would not be covered in the interview, and therefore was happy to remove the offending section. This, you have to suspect, was Lie Number One.

Lie Number Two came more recently from Lambeth Palace and, more specifically, from its boring Stalinist press officer, John Jennings. He said that, contrary to newspaper reports, no attempt was made to dissuade Today from running the section of the interview that dealt with Iraq. So we have a real conundrum.

What actually happened, so far as I can ascertain, was this — and bear with me, because we now have some of that inter

minable Hutton-level detail which you may find wholly irrelevant to your life.

The Today programme's producer, Kirsty McKenzie, fixed the interview with the Archbishop and at no time suggested it would be solely about that vexing dispute in the Church of England. the battle between homosexuals and Africans. We know this because the original written brief for the interview — which, unusually, John Humphrys actually read, perhaps because it had been compiled by Ms McKenzie, who is a very talented and experienced producer — covered a multitude of subjects, including Iraq. Kirsty would not have included Iraq in her briefing paper if Lambeth Palace had insisted that the subject should not be covered. She might have argued with them about it, but in the end she would either have conceded or junked the interview.

The interview was arranged several days before it was actually recorded. Later, Lambeth Palace started to worry about the potential breadth of the interview and rang Today — but, apparently, no undertakings to confine the interview to homosexuals and Africans were given by the Today team.

After the interview had been recorded, but before it was broadcast, Jennings rang the Today team to complain. Then the chief press officer at Lambeth Palace, Jeremy Harris, contacted the editor, Kevin Marsh. I don't know precisely what was said but, as a result, the most interesting and dramatic section of the interview was removed and the public was denied the chance of hearing it. What they got instead was more hand-wringing about homosexuals and Africans.

So, we should conclude: it is at the least hugely disingenuous of the BBC to claim that it was agreed that the interview should cover only one subject. Just as it was disingenuous of Jennings to say that Lambeth Palace didn't complain once the thing had been recorded.

There is now an internal investigation at Television Centre. Not into why the decision was taken to lose the best bit of one of the strongest interviews of the year (the wrong decision, I think we ought to agree at this point). Rather, into who talked to the press and gave them the details of the subsequent row. And the excellent Humphrys may, as a result of what he thinks was a stupid editorial decision, resign. That would be an enormous blow to the programme and the BBC. John has often muttered about leaving — but I reckon the odds are now slightly in favour of him going, in the medium term.

None of this would matter if it were an isolated incident. We all make bad decisions from time to time. But evidence is growing that the BBC has become suffused with a terror of getting into trouble again and that, worse still, all that press officers have to do is to growl menacingly down a telephone line and perfectly good stories will be dropped by programme editors before you can say 'Gilligan'.

You may think it very, very odd indeed, for example, that the BBC journalist Michael Crick was not permitted to broadcast that financial story about lain and Betsy Duncan Smith on his own programme, Newsnight. Or indeed anywhere else in the corporation. I understand that he attempted to do so repeatedly over the course of a week but was rebuffed by his bosses on each occasion. Even after the story had broken in the press he was kept off air, for a while. Isn't that a bit strange?

Some commentators have noticed, too, a marked softening in the way in which people like Humphrys and Paxman and Naughtie approach their political interviewees — and it is certainly true that on at least one occasion in the last month or so a senior broadcaster has been quietly reprimanded for 'going a bit far' with a member of the Cabinet — i.e., for persisting with those difficult questions that the bastards (to betray a certain prejudice, briefly) are reluctant to answer.

One hesitates to eviscerate the BBC after all it has gone through in the past six months. It stood up well, in public, to Alastair Campbell's bullying and did so despite constant attacks from its commercial enemies. It is the focus of continual sniping (not least from the Dai6) Telegraph's wholly fatuous `Beebwatch' campaign, an example of paranoia and bias if ever there was one) in the daily press. And one can understand that the corporation might well wish for a few quiet months free from controversy and accusation, particularly where the Today programme is concerned. And not just the corporation, either, but its beleaguered journalists, too. We don't want another Gilligan, do we?, they will be saying to each other, and to their underlings, every time the phones light up. And the worry is that even though Campbell has resigned, he has nonetheless done the damage. He has implanted within the corporation the notion that Gilligan, and stuff like Gilligan, is a thing to be avoided; whereas, in fact, if you're a journalist, it's the whole point.