Army joins assault on BBC's war

Senior figures in the army are furious about the BBC’s coverage, which they say bears no relation to events on the ground. They are particularly angry about suggestions in a BBC documentary, broadcast on Sunday night, that the army embellished reports of a militia attack on Iraqi citizens for propaganda purposes.

The row comes at an awkward moment for the BBC, which has been embroiled in a bitter dispute with Alastair Campbell, the Downing Street communications director. The BBC had accused Mr Campbell of spinning an intelligence report to improve the government’s case for going to war, but he looks set to be cleared of those accusations by a Commons inquiry.

The militia attack came as British forces were trying to secure Basra and ended with a number of civilian casualties, including a woman who was seriously wounded and had to be rescued by the army.

Last night, an army spokesman said: "We are disappointed that the BBC attributes our reporting of the incident that happened on the bridge into Basra as propaganda. What we believe to have happened on the ground was as reported. This was nothing to do with the propaganda value or otherwise."

Privately, senior army figures are less diplomatic. "I do find it very depressing the way the BBC are heading," said one senior officer, speaking on condition of anonymity. "I think this is part of the wider problem that the BBC has at the moment.

"This documentary series is getting more and more negative and seems to imply that everything that we do is for propaganda purposes. The BBC are determined to paint the war in a negative light."

He said the corporation appeared to have decided that the army had embellished its version of what happened on the bridge outside Basra because footage shot by a lone cameraman at the scene did not show conclusive evidence of Iraqi gunmen firing into the crowd. He added: "The broadcasters seem to be suggesting that because they could not find any hard evidence that it happened, that we had made it up in order to assist the government with their political difficulties. But that’s not how the army operates.

"We don’t give a damn about the government’s political difficulties. Once we are committed, we fight as best we can and remain detached from the political side of things.

"The thought that we would be doing it in order to help Tony Blair in London is absurd. That’s not how we operate."

The BBC last night said it stood by the programme. A spokesman said: "The programme gives an impartial and balanced picture of how a modern army works in conflict. The BBC had complete editorial control over the series, showing events as they unfolded without reconstruction."

The BBC’s Fighting the War documentary has been compiled from footage shot by documentary teams embedded with various British units during the war. Sunday night’s instalment featured scenes of crowds caught on the bridge outside Basra as they tried to leave the city.

Reports at the time, including one in The Scotsman, described how a pick-up truck fired into the crowd before being destroyed by a tank, but this was not captured on film by the BBC’s cameraman. Instead, the documentary implied that the crowd had been accidentally caught up in crossfire between British troops and Iraqi fighters and suggested the army had deliberately misled journalists about the true nature of the incident.

But although the pick-up truck was not caught on film, details of what happened were relayed over the battlenet - the radio system fitted in the fighting vehicles - at the time and subsequently confirmed by soldiers who witnessed the attack and medics who treated the injured.

The row has once again raised questions about the BBC’s coverage of the war highlighted by Mr Campbell when he appeared before the Commons foreign affairs select committee last week. "When you are dealing with the BBC, I am afraid they just will not admit that they can get things wrong," he said. "If that is BBC journalism, then God help us."