What’s Happening at the BBC: The Corporation is facing a serious challenge to its future and to its independence
What’s Happening at the BBC : CJR
“To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” —Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
A very British crisis needs a very British epigraph. The BBC has lost not one, but two directors general in the space of three months. The first, Mark Thompson, left the Corporation under what seemed like orderly circumstances to take up a post as chief executive of The New York Times, a job he officially starts on Monday. The circumstances of the second departure are far messier. George Entwistle, who had been in the job barely more than a month, did “the honorable thing” on Friday and resigned after two editorial mistakes made by the formerly well regarded BBC program Newsnight made his position untenable.
Entwistle’s resignation on Saturday was directly linked to a report broadcast by Newsnight on November 2 that misidentified a public figure allegedly involved in a child abuse scandal. The report, connected to an already broiling scandal, did not make things any worse, theoretically, for Thompson. But the BBC he left is now facing a very serious challenge to its future and independence.
The turmoil at the BBC started with a revelation involving a now-dead TV presenter and public figure, Jimmy Savile, who is accused of molesting possibly hundreds of children. US commentators have tried to explain Savile to the domestic audience, but there really is no parallel here. (For those who really want to understand the deep roots of the scandal, you can do no better than to read Andrew O’Hagan’s essay in the London Review of Books.) The allegations against Savile were being investigated by Newsnight last year, but its editor, Peter Rippon, decided not to run the investigation on the grounds that the evidence was not sound enough. Subsequently, rival broadcaster ITV pulled together a documentary carrying the allegations against Savile, making the BBC’s decision not to run the original piece seem both flawed and possibly compromised. Just as Entwistle succeeded Thompson as director general, the story of how the BBC had shelved its piece broke.