BBC’s news chief, deputy ‘step aside’

LONDON: The head of news at the British Broadcasting Corporation stepped aside yesterday after a program falsely accusing a former senior politician of child abuse sparked one of the worst crises in the publicly-funded broadcaster’s 90-year history.
The BBC has been rocked by two news programs, one that falsely accused the politician which was broadcast last week, and another which alleged child sex abuse by a former star presenter, the late Jimmy Savile, but which was not aired.
The affair, which raised questions about ethics, competence and management at the BBC, has claimed the scalp of Director General George Entwistle and prompted its chairman to warn that the world’s biggest broadcaster was doomed unless it reformed.
Helen Boaden, director of BBC News, and her deputy Stephen Mitchell, stepped aside pending a review of why editors spiked the report last year on Savile, who has been accused of abusing children on BBC premises.
Some BBC staff have cast the 22,000-strong Corporation as a bureaucratic behemoth where journalistic talent is throttled by incompetent managers, and opponents — and even some allies — questioned whether it could survive in its current form.
“Everything is in play and I think this is becoming an existential threat to the BBC, not just in terms of the future of the corporation in its current form but in terms of the concept of public service broadcasting as a whole,” said a source close to the inner workings of the BBC.
“They are fast running out of options, they’re half way down the management list already,” said the source, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Entwistle resigned as director general on Saturday, just two months into the job, to take responsibility for the report, which wrongly said an unidentified Conservative figure from the era of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had raped boys in social care.
But the man, later identified on the Internet as Lord Alistair McAlpine, vehemently denied the allegation and his lawyer has threatened legal action against Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship current affairs show which broadcast the mistaken allegations.
The BBC has apologized for the report, which it said was shoddy journalism and wrong. The abuse victim who was the source of the allegation said it was a case of mistaken identity and has also apologized to McAlpine.
Entwistle’s exit failed to cool the crisis: the government said it was hard to justify his payoff of a year’s salary of 450,000 pounds ($715,900) from an organization funded by a 145.50 pound annual levy on households with a television.
“This is a large amount of money, and tough to justify considering the circumstances ofEntwistle’s departure and his contractual arrangements,” Culture Minister Maria Miller said.
Viewers expressed anger at the size of the payoff. “I’m upset, they’ve messed up. I’ve just paid my license fee as well and they’ve gone and rewarded this guy with a massive payoff,” said Patrick Daguiar, 49, at London’s Liverpool Street Station.
“If they can’t get their act together then we should just do away with the license fee and they can survive on advertising like everyone else.” BBC staff say the poor handling of the abuse allegations against Savile, a DJ turned television star who is suspected of sexually abusing dozens of children, and the flawed Newsnight report showed the broadcaster had veered far from its roots.
Disturbed by both the commercialism of American radio and the state controls imposed in the Soviet Union, the BBC’s founding father, John Reith, had intended the BBC to educate, inform and entertain when it was founded in 1922.
But staff said bureaucracy had bloated in recent years, including under Entwistle’s predecessor Mark Thompson, who is set to become chief executive of the New York Times Co. on Monday. Thompson served as BBC chief from 2004 to 2012.
“It is still over managed and the management still speak gobbledygook (nonsense),” said David Dimbleby, one of the BBC’s most accomplished broadcasters.
“Any editor, any head of a department spends their lives filling in forms, answering questions about things that are really not necessary using a language that is so arcane ... It has gone bonkers at that level,” he said.
The BBC is already undertaking a plan to cut 2,000 jobs.
Criticized by both Conservative and Labour governments, the BBC’s last major crisis was in 2004 when a public inquiry over a report alleging government impropriety in the build-up to the war in Iraq led to the resignation of both Director General Greg Dyke and Chairman Gavyn Davies.
Commercial rivals, including publications owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, called for Chairman of the BBC Trust Chris Patten to resign.
“Patten represents all that is worst about public sector complacency,” the Sun said in its editorial under the headline “Busted Beeb.” “Nothing can ever come right at the BBC while Patten is there.” A senior Conservative lawmaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Patten had been a disaster and that he had no confidence in him.
When asked if Cameron still had confidence in the 68-year-old Patten, himself once a senior Conservative politician, the prime minister’s spokesman said: “Yes.” “The important thing is for Chris Patten to lead the BBC out of its present difficulties and that has to be the priority,” the spokesman said. “It’s important that the BBC grip this and that credibility and public trust is restored.” Patten, best known for handing control of Hong Kong back to China in 1997, told the BBC on Sunday that without public trust the BBC was doomed.
A poll commissioned by the BBC after the Savile revelations but before the latest debacle showed that public confidence in the broadcaster had declined. The poll showed 47 percent of respondents said they felt the BBC could no longer be trusted while 45 percent did trust the corporation.
When a similar study was undertaken in 2009, 62 percent of people felt the BBC was a trusted source.
“The BBC is all about trust. The BBC needs to be trusted. If we haven’t got that, we don’t have anything,” acting Director General Tim Davie told the BBC.