Savile’s own epigraph:
“When I’m gone, they’ll say: ‘I always thought he was straight but he wasn’t – he was crooked.’ ”
I imagine that’s one that could equally apply to the BBC.
The BBC have been pushing the story that the Newsnight programme wasn’t really about Savile personally and that senior management didn’t know, did not want to know and shouldn’t know what was going on at Newsnight….due to the BBC’s renowned ‘Independence’.
However it looks like the programme was expected to kick up a bit of a fuss as you might imagine, and that preparations were in hand to cope with that…‘a line to take’…..is it really likely senior manager was kept in the dark about a programme that was going to put a bomb under the BBC and that they were not told at least of the content of the programme….and asked if it should be aired?
‘The email from a press officer to BBC executives appears to contradict the corporation’s official statements about why the BBC Two programme was cancelled just before Christmas.
It discloses how the investigation was so well advanced that the press office was preparing “lines to take” in response to anticipated hostile media inquiries.
The email, leaked to The Times, refers to journalists on Newsnight “focusing on allegations of abuse”.
The press officer, Helen Deller, writes that “we may well need to do a bit of managing around this” and that “we should bear in mind how BBC complaints team respond”.
The BBC seems to have lost its marbles slightly over this as it prepares to air a Panorama programme about the Newsnight decision….the day before the BBC DG, George Entwistle, goes before a committee of MPs to investigate the affair.
Is that just bad judgement by the BBC, or an attempt to play a spoiler and spike the guns of any inquiry with an exoneration of the BBC, or is it a stab in the back for Entwistle who seems to have upset the News staff at the BBC if it implicates the BBC in some sort of wrongdoing?
Not really a sensible time to air it I would have thought….especially as any information from the committee looking into the Newsnight abandonment must surely be relevant to the Panorama programme itself, investigating as it is…the Newsnight abandonment.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Matthew 7:15
For all you left-wing freaks reading this its in a book called the Bible. I know alot of BBC Left-wing have never read the bible or know what it is.
But tried reading the bible it might do you some good.
A Biblical prophesy about Gordon Brown.
For what does it profit a man if he can save the world and cannot save himself.
About £20,000 for a half hour speech on the circuit I suspect !!!
Nobody would turn up – again…
I heard Gordon Browns favourite film is Rainman.
Gordon Brown wouldn’t be able to find a prayer in the Bible.
Or as I like to put it
Some people are souls, and some – ars-‘oles.
Another Bible quote ” the Anti Christ will come as the Angel of Light.
BBC’s Jimmy Saville fits the bill
That article is making something out of nothing. The email doesn’t contradict the BBC’s official position at all. It wasn’t sent to “executives”, but to the Newsnight producers. Nobody said they didn’t know what was going on, the whole noise was about top brass knowing and possibly canning the segment.
However, we at this blog know one of those Newsnight producers: Meirion Jones. He’s the one who respects Greg Palast and hired him to do biased reports about the US elections and how ACORN was innocent and the only voter fraud ever is perpetrated by racist white Republicans who want to stop black people from voting.
Except for believing a certain US election was stolen, Jones did not come across to me as someone who was crooked and would spike the Savile story if he had real evidence. I think he might have stopped it if there was no support from the police, which there apparently wasn’t, and I guess on which their whole case for defense rests. If the police dropped their investigation due to lack of evidence, Newsnight can claim clean hands. At least I think that’s where they stand at the moment.
Rippon is not to be trusted, based on that awful apologia he published, but I’m not ready to dismiss Jones yet. Is he biased and would produce a politically biased report? I think so. Is he slimy and would sit on a solid story like this? I don’t think so.
I could be wrong, but it doesn’t seem likely. Of course, this doesn’t discount the possibility that top mandarins put a stop to it, overruling the Newsnight producers. For all we know Jones is one of those who wanted to broadcast it, but was overruled. That’s still a viable possibility, but the email touted in the article is certainly no proof of anything.
If he thinks he can make more money by spilling the beans than by closing shop then there will be beans aplenty.
Experience tells us that they do what’s best for them first …
Hmm. Maybe that’s why he’s now helping Panorama with their inquires. Can’t wait to see which heads stay above water, and which ones get crushed under the wheels of the circled wagons. (sorry for the weird mixed metaphor)
A glimmer of the old Beeboid morality lives on in the new:
FLASHBACK: Yeah, Savile’s a serial rapist and molester of mostly scruffy girls and groupies, and incidentally raised like a billion £ for hospitals. I’m gonna let it slide.
‘Independent’ :-
“Revealed: Newsnight emails that accuse BBC of Jimmy Savile cover-up.
“BBC boss was warned that broadcaster has issued ‘misleading statements’ about aborted Savile documentary.”
By IAN BURRELL
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/revealed-newsnight-emails-that-accuse-bbc-of-jimmy-savile-coverup-8218971.html
ITV News:-
“Report: Newsnight journalist: ‘BBC in Savile cover-up'”
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2012-10-19/newsnight-journalist-bbc-in-cover-up-over-savile-programme/?
‘senior management didn’t know, did not want to know and shouldn’t know what was going on at Newsnight….due to the BBC’s renowned ‘Independence’.’
Speaking of independent news…
‘The new Director-General of the BBC, George Entwistle, failed to adequately respond to an impassioned warning from a senior Newsnight journalist that the Corporation has been involved in a “concerted effort” to cover up’
That compelled funding sure does compensate when professional integrity and trust are out the window.
Not sure I have great confidence in any entity aiming to hold power to account when they seem to have rather mixed feelings on cover ups when it becomes more ‘internal’.
Oh dear!
When the Independent are shafting their fellow-liberals at the BBC like this-you ARE in trouble!
I`ll give Liz McKean three months before she gets offered the concrete knickers that Miriam O Reilly was pushed into, before she went to research shopping trolleys pushed into the Manchester Ship Canal.
I mean-she`s hardly a star name like Jimmy Savile is she?
Now that is a smoking gun. The top brass knew but publicly acted like they didn’t and said more than once that there was a different reason for the problem. You know, that sounds familiar somehow, reminds me of something else the BBC hasn’t been too keen to report much.
Yep – Main story on R4 news tonight once again is that somebody called someone a pleb.
There are some things you can depend on good old Auntie delivering.
To be fair to Savile and Hitler-they were pretty upfront about their plans, their histories and their intentions-and neither thought that they`d be leaving us any kind of legacy, unlike the preening poseurs like Blair and Clinton.
I`d prefer that awful, evil to the snowjobs the BBC confer on their mates like Hobsbawm, Toynbee, Stalin and Mao.
If Savile had ever had a Newsround type show-or wanted kids to get into politics with School reporting/Youth Parliaments etc…I don`t think he`d be getting the post mortem that he`s getting now!
Surely a good topic for a debate here for cBBC with Richard Bacon to host it!
Now that you mention it, chris, The Obamessiah was also pretty up front in 2008 about what He really wanted to do. Only we were told that believing what He was telling us was stupid, or just racist.
Not sure the ‘right wing conspiracy’ ploy will work too well at this latest outing destined to spoil a few Beeboids’ Sunday morning hose down…
Media Guardian @mediaguardian
Jimmy Savile: evidence BBC was aware of abuse claims grows http://gu.com/p/3b9d8/tf
Still, they still seem happy with how their more fleeting associations with other kids can pan out…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2012/10/malala_yousafzai_and_the_bbc.html
For the first outing since Mr. Rippon’s now less than rock-fast attempt, an interesting choice.
And the near twitter level comment counter working its magic until someone goes & spoils it by not worshiping them and it has to be closed.
I accept that this mitigates the BBC’s responsibility for her current situation somewhat. Somewhat, but certainly not entirely, which is what the BBC is trying to do here.
This is a third-world, very difficult culture they’re meddling with. Purest of intentions, I’m sure, but they meddled nevertheless, enabling someone to speak out against the local rulers. Even if the girl’s writings weren’t “political”, obviously it was meant to distribute a very specific message which can only portray the Taliban in a negative light.
This girl and her family and her culture would have absolutely no way to understand the consequences of their actions. The situation in which those actions – going public – took place wouldn’t have been possible if not for the BBC making the girl famous in the first place. The BBC created her, and the fact that her association with the BBC ended when her family left the area doesn’t absolve them of their responsibility for creating her celebrity in the first place. No famous diary, no reason for her parents to allow her to go public, no public awards ceremony, etc. The BBC started this fire, and can’t blame the wind exclusively when it spreads.
Currently pretty dismayed with SKY’s calibre of press pack reporting, but at least they are just chasing ratings as opposed to acting as political PR agents.
So as a least bad option, I stick with them for morning ‘news’.
Which means they do cover most things, as opposed to the world’s most trusted editorial ommitter.
Hence in the current paper review, we do at least get to learn from such as the Mirror and The Sunday Times that the Savile affair is still alive, sick as ever and spreading the dirt far and wide.
In the latter we even are tantalised further (behind paywall) that cover-ups are still very much in the frame vs. ‘no one knew, told… or could do anything’ with BBC Production very much being held to account with questions they will need to answer.
Tomorrow’s Independent front page: http://twitpic.com/b69mrh
We should press for an Enquiry into political bias. There is clearly corruption in the BBC, it extends from the moral into the political.