Have you ever been in trouble? Well, if you have there is a game you can play to get yourself out of it and that game is called ‘Investigate Yourself’. You see, anyone who has watched the antics of Sir Humphrey Appleby knows that an internal inquiry is a means of either exonerating yourself or sharing out the blame equally so that no one has to be sacked. Clever eh?

External inquiries are not guaranteed to get you into trouble either. In the two most high-profile government inquiries of late (Hutton and Butler), those charged with conducting the investigations were Lord Hutton, who happens to be friends with Derry Irvine who happens to be the best friend of Tony Blair -corruption or nepotism - you decide! And as for the Butler inquiry - the head was made a lord by Blair and has worked in the civil service for many years, working closely with three Prime Ministers. He also went to Harrow and University College Oxford - you would be hard pushed to find a person more entrenched in the current establishment and therefore he is extremely unlikely to want to shake it to its core. Most other people on the Butler inquiry all had close ties with the government (current and former civil servants) but don't worry, Michael Ancram was there too. You would be hard pushed to staff an inquiry with people who are going
to be more docile.

The latest group to get in on this act are the BBC who have recently launched a ‘Newswatch’ section on their website . We presume this is because either due to budget cuts they could no longer pay Ann Robinson for the use of her name while someone else Ghost Writes ‘Points of View’ or, they are becoming a little concerned at broadening and deepening public scepticism about some of their reporting in relation to Palestine, Fallujah and many other places and issues. See a Spinwatch discussion with them here and some of the things Zmag had to say here. These are only 2 of many examples.

At Spinwatch we have decided to keep an eye on Newswatch and see if the answer to the age old question “who is to guard the guardians” is in fact the guardians themselves or if there is another game being played. We are happy to receive emails if you also happen to have noticed something nefarious going on here.

(Some people investigating themselves yesterday)