It may be too much to hope that the BBC will survive intact under the new charter, with its self-government, scope and licence fee all uncompromised. Politicians of many kinds are envious of its special place in British society and its international status as a trustworthy broadcaster – particularly of news – and some of them see it in crass commercial terms as a world “brand” that could be converted into a source of vast private profit.

The price of a new charter which maintains most, if not all, of the qualities that set the BBC apart from other broadcasters, at home or abroad, is certain to be a strenuous effort from inside the corporation not only to clean up its act – especially where news is concerned – but to be seen to be cleaning it up. Whatever injustices the BBC's governors, managers and journalists see in Hutton's conclusions, they are in no shape to quibble with the report. The impossibility of resisting Hutton was made obvious by the resignations, whether willed or involuntary, of Gavyn Davies, Greg Dyke and Andrew Gilligan. The BBC is going to have to take Hutton on the chin, pick itself up, dust itself off, and start, if not quite all over again, then at least from the position of admitting that it has lessons to learn.

Some kind of internal inquiry has been started under the guidance of Stephen Dando, a member of the executive committee who has just been given the title of Director, BBC People. It is much the same job as he had before when he was Director of Human Resources and Internal Communications, one of those grand quasi-military BBC titles, like the legendary CPCOH (Controller of Paper Clips, Outer Hebrides). The BBC says of Mr Dando that “his career has focused on change management and people development within large organisations”. So it is clear that, at this early stage at least, the BBC takes the view that the task is one which must be entrusted to a person with managerial, rather than editorial, experience.

Nevertheless, if Mr Dando's inquiry ends by proposing changes in working practice, the people who will have to put them into operation are journalists. The burden of day-to-day application of whatever new procedures are introduced post-Hutton will fall on researchers, reporters and editors. One aspect of the new BBC news approach is described in this issue of the BJR by Roger Harrabin, a Today programme correspondent and an architect of guidance drawn up to determine how the BBC should report stories which involve projections of risk to life and limb.

Work on the preparation of Harrabin's document began before Hutton, but its contents will certainly form part of the corporation's armoury of responses to the criticisms of its news selection and projection that have arisen in and around Hutton's report. The guidelines offer journalists a series of suggestions by which they can judge how to handle stories such as an outbreak of disease without exaggerating the dangers, skating over scientific differences of opinion, or unnecessarily alarming the public. They tackle the kind of news reporting and presentation problems that many journalists lack the scientific education or knowledge to cope with by themselves. They may well discourage irresponsible sensationalism. They are eminently sensible.

One of the motives for constructing them seems to have been to save the embarrassment of having to call in scientists and other experts to go on TV or radio to set straight an inaccurate record. So it would not be surprising if similar sets of guidelines were to appear, designed to keep reporters from misunderstanding other aspects of life and thus avoiding unwelcome complaints and denials from business men, football managers, theatrical impresarios, show-business celebrities – from real stars to 15-minute famers – and even politicians.

The danger here is that however valuable and enlightening these guidelines proved, their effect would often be to overburden busy journalists to the extent that their work would slow down to a stop. Stories which failed immediately to satisfy some aspect of the “code” would never be broadcast because time would simply run out.

So the challenges facing the BBC at this most testing time are to repair the demoralisation of its journalists caused by the Dr David Kelly affair; to set sane new or revised working methods obvious to the viewer and listener as well as to staff; and to achieve that without making it impossible for stories, even potentially embarrassing ones, to be given an airing. If the BBC can succeed in this, it will have earned the right to get on with its job of being the greatest public service broadcaster in the world.

That's how most members of the public still see it. Their general contempt, in varying degrees, for the press remains. As other writers in this issue emphasise, restoring credibility and respect is by no means the BBC's problem alone. The entire news media are suspect. The drinks in the Last Chance Saloon have long since been swigged. The glasses are empty. It is closing time and the bill has to be paid.