BBC and Jimmy Savile

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/19/bbc-and-jimmy-savile

Version 0 of 1.

Nobody familiar with the inner workings of the BBC will see in Nick Pollard's report anything other than a true likeness. In lucid, compelling language, the report by the former head of Sky News into the Jimmy Savile affair paints a picture of modern dysfunction worthy of Francis Bacon's Screaming Pope. If the decision to drop the Newsnight investigation was "seriously flawed", worse was to follow. Efforts to get at the truth behind the Savile story proved beyond the combined efforts of senior management, legal department and corporate communications for well over a month.

Warring barons who kept crucial information to themselves, rigid management chains, and a director general in George Entwistle who lacked the means and the will to kick down departmental doors, combined to create chaos and confusion. In one telling moment, Stephen Mitchell, the deputy director of news, could offer "no convincing explanation" why he took the Newsnight programme off a list intended to flag up to management some element of reputational risk. If the BBC acted swiftly in replacing Peter Rippon, Newsnight's editor, shifting Helen Boaden, the director of news, and announcing the retirement of her deputy, Mr Mitchell, one can only conclude it has taken a long time to clear the decks.

And that job surely has only just begun in BBC News. A second, less readable report by the editorial standards committee of the BBC, examining the circumstances around the disastrous misidentification of Lord McAlpine in a separate Newsnight report wrongly linking him to child sex abuse, revealed a further grave breach of elementary journalistic standards. A tweet that a senior Tory was about to be named as a paedophile heightened the pressure on the Newsnight team and the issue of jigsaw identification, distracting them from the editorial content of the piece.

Little wonder that, according to an opinion poll conducted for the Guardian by Conquest Research, nearly half the public have less trust in the BBC since the Savile scandal began. To think the behemoth will float back to the top of public opinion through copious servings of Strictly Come Dancing would be the worst mistake its new director general Tony Hall could make. Mr Pollard has now presented Lord Hall with a golden opportunity to start afresh. If ever there were a moment to untangle a management structure mired in process, as another old hand, Sir John Tusa, observed, this is it.

If the BBC is to retain the system which devolves editorial authority to its programme editors – and there are compelling reasons for keeping it that way – above them must lie a quick response team of senior managers who can take hard decisions in real time. This needs both experience and political antennae. They may need to bring in new blood to do that.