And now, the war of words

As war raged in Iraq, the BBC came under fire at home for being pessimistic and anti-war. But this time the corporation is striking back at its critics in the right-wing press, as Ian Burrell reports

For all its modernisation, the BBC still likes viewers to think of it as "Auntie", the trusted old relative you can always turn to in times of trouble, such as during the Iraqi conflict. But when it comes to taking criticism from rivals over its output, the corporation is less Aunt Sally than Chemical Sally. Out come Auntie's sharpened hat-pins and any other weapons at its disposal.

The BBC uses the current edition of its in-house magazine, Ariel, to make an extraordinary attack on The Daily Telegraph. The broadsheet newspaper, which consistently scolded the BBC for taking an unnecessarily pessimistic tone in its coverage of the war in Iraq, finds itself on the receiving end of a broadside attack.

The Daily Telegraph, Ariel told its readers, was the "long-time news sheet of Colonel Blimp". The BBC magazine sets out a series of Telegraph criticisms of the corporation's coverage and juxtaposes them with seven clippings from the newspaper, showing – Ariel said – that it was equally "culpable" in the matter of defeatist talk.

The Ariel piece is significant in that it clearly involved a considerable amount of research in trawling the columns of the newspaper for its examples.

What is more interesting was that the Ariel exercise appeared to have been carried out at the behest of senior BBC executives. At a symposium on journalism held last Thursday at the University of London's Goldsmith College, the BBC director general, Greg Dyke, referred to it.

He complained that the BBC was caught in the crossfire between those who believed that the corporation should reflect anti-war feeling and those who thought that it should be wholly committed to getting behind the troops.

In particular, he noted that The Daily Telegraph "had a long leader criticising us", but said that the BBC had carried out some research whose findings had shown that the Telegraph "said the same things" that it accused the BBC of saying.

The Ariel article takes matters a good deal further. "It's tough when you're flying a leader writer's desk in time of war, all those miles from the action," it sneers. "Still, you can always take potshots at fellow journalists in the field, drop a bit of bombast, indulge in unfriendly fire from the moral high ground up in Canary Wharf."

Ariel tells its readers that "the tone of the broadcasting was not to the Telegraph's liking. Its patriotism was affronted by what the BBC would consider impartiality." The article then gives three examples of the Telegraph's BBC-baiting leaders. One, from 12 April, read: "The BBC has had a terrible war. It has failed in many ways. The first is bias. Throughout the conflict and before it, the BBC gave disproportionate coverage to opponents of the war. More subtly, it has sought, on almost every day of the fighting, to put the most pessimistic construction on events."

With heavy sarcasm, Ariel says: "After that you probably could do with an optimism fix, so here are a few upbeat examples of reporting and comment from the pages of The Daily Telegraph. The magazine then quotes Telegraph correspondents reporting on the difficult days in the last week of March when the Allied advance on Baghdad was meeting significant resistance.

Among those quoted was Anthony King, who observed: "Not only has the euphoria of the war's early days largely evaporated but the public mood is sober, even sombre."

His colleague Frank Johnson was more downbeat the following day. "The Americans got it wrong. They have not put in enough troops. They underestimated Iraqi resistance, and overestimated Iraqi assistance. It is pointless to deny that, nor is it defeatist." The Ariel report ends: "We hope you're feeling better now."

But The Daily Telegraph was not the only member of the press pack to attack the BBC for not being more positive in its war coverage. The Sun was another constant critic, and during the war it seized on a leaked e-mail from the BBC's own defence correspondent, Paul Adams, accusing colleagues of exaggerating the losses suffered by coalition forces.

In a memo to BBC executives, Adams wrote: "I was gobsmacked to hear, in a set of headlines today, that the coalition was suffering 'significant casualties'. This is simply not true." He said BBC colleagues had an unrealistic view of war. "Who dreamed up the line that the coalition are achieving 'small victories at a very high price?' The truth is exactly the opposite," he said. "The gains are huge and the costs still relatively low."

The Sun claimed that the memo supported its accusations of BBC bias, but the corporation is no longer prepared simply to turn the other cheek when such criticisms are made. Competition between British broadcasters has never been greater than it was during this conflict.

To defend its position, the BBC publicity team has aggressively promoted its ratings successes and robustly defended the corporation against claims – which were not directed at other broadcasters – that it has been too anti-war.

Even Greg Dyke has now taken up the cudgels. In his lecture on Thursday, he rebutted claims that the BBC had been "Saddam's stooges". He went on the offensive by making an outspoken attack on the corporation's American rivals.

According to Dyke, the BBC had received hundreds of e-mails from American citizens thanking the corporation for its more questioning approach to the war. Dyke said: "I was amazed by how many people just came up to me and said they were following the war on the BBC because they no longer trusted the American electronic news media." He accused the American channels of having "wrapped themselves in the American flag and swapped impartiality for patriotism".

The director general's comments will not have gone down well in America. Nor will the Ariel article silence the BBC's critics in the right-of-centre British press. The BBC may, as Dyke claims, have had a good war, but the media battle isn't over yet.