Further to Alan’s post below, Savilegate continues to damage the BBC.
“The Newsnight editor responsible for dropping a report into claims Jimmy Savile sexually abused people is stepping aside, the BBC has said. Peter Rippon’s move is for the duration of an inquiry into Newsnight’s handling of the planned report last year. Earlier this month, in a blog, Mr Rippon explained the editorial reasons behind his decision to axe the report. The BBC has now issued a correction, calling the blog “inaccurate or incomplete in some respects”.
Or, if you like straight language, …wrong. The BBC has major questions to answer into WHY it played along with Savile for ALL those years. There must be DOZENS of people who turned a blind eye to Mr Fix It. It seems like institutionalised avoidance of sexual abuse going on right under their noses. Time for arrests?
The panorama special is descredited already.
what a load of censored shite
they just showed a snap of 5 seconds max of fatty pang being doorstepped by an iTV hackette:
Fatty gives half an answer, but we all know he folded under her supplementary Q’s
Censorious bastards!
More nonce-ence:
Only when he dies did his past catch up with him?
The police inteviewed him under caution in 2007?
FFS?
If they cant pre-view their programme and cut out crap like this it makes you wonder if they really want to.
Police seem very relaxed about this internal “inquiry”. When everyone’s been briefed plod will “act”, and everyone will chorus “lessons have been learned”.
Just like a council inquiry into social worker pervs.
Paxman, opening Newsnight tonight, said that this affair has caused serious damage to the BBC, but that the corporation can take some comfort from the fact that most of the damage was done by the BBC itself.
Get your heads around THAT logic without causing yourselves a serious migraine.
Also – the exec from ITV claimed that once ITV had broadcast their programme of allegations, there was a culture of defensiveness that immediately surrounded the BBC. This is, of course, entirely true. We heard it not just in BBC programmes (radio and TV), but also from BBC regulars in various non-BBC publications. They’ve all helped to push the notion that the corporation itself ought to be beyond criticism, with only the failures of individuals at fault, but this knee-jerk protection of the organisation is the very culture that has enabled such abuses to persist for decades. Collectively, they’ve brought this upon themselves…and the BBC as a whole.
The whole denial began ona sunday morning when the sunday mirror had a full front page spread about it.
The INBBC’s repsonse to that on its paper review that morning? It was to not show the sunday mirror at all.It was documented here on these pages, on this blog.
Is that an organisation thats guilty?
Yep…you are so not wrong.
‘a culture of defensiveness that immediately surrounded the BBC’
One that has, to now, pervaded the entire edifice, especially their complaints ‘process’.
Why did the entire media play along with him? Where was the News of the World expose? Or did he cover his tracks by subverting those who knew? Newsnight is irrelevant in all this, just the final example of the blindness that seemed to follow Saville’s travels. Why didn’t this all come out 40 years go? Or even when Gary Glitter was outed?
why didnt gary “out ” him? who knows
Do I remember the BBC Savile scandal? The corridors of my house were strewn with empty champagne bottles. I’ll always remember that.
Priceless!
If it wasn’t so serious I’d laugh!
Jimmmy Savile fixed it for me once so I got one a-level instead of none.
It got me into Oxford as well as the brown envelope daddy gave oxford.
somone at the top pulled it, there’s no doubt.
where will it lead above ripon?
When the Guardian closes I will have my programme on the BBC.
It will be Called Polly watch.
It will be like my columns in the Guardian I will just do the same four things over and over again.
Boggy Marsh yet seems to be quite a ubiquitous presence in all of this, touring the studios defending his old pals to the hilt…and of course playing a key role as wingman in the Panorama special.
hmmm….makes you wonder doesnt it?
He’s now defending dogwhsitle!
Who`s paying Marsh Gas then?
Must be a hell of a pile up of mobility scooters as the dads Army of ex Beeb stoolies and trusties trawl all Beeb outlets(and Channel 4 of course) with their sandbags, healing balms and clipped Oxbridge accents.
What a shower of no marks and clueless quislings…all pimping our pension pots to piss into!
Ok I’ve had enough now, the presenter announced that BBC executives refused to take part in this programme.
What? am I watching bloody al jazeera?
FFS!
Al Jazeera I some of those bottles of wine in my wine cellar in my Villa in Tuscany.
Good wine I especially recommend the 89.
I’m reminded that child abuse is not just physical. Dr Who promoted ‘dissociation of affection sex’ though a children’s programme that scared children to open their minds up.
Huh?
Just watched the Propaganda Special and – well what?
The only thng that comes out clearly is that the BBC realise there is a shit storm overhead and they are setting up Rippon as the lightning conductor. The man has been hung out to dry.
What nice people these BBC types are.
Even those embracing the Divine Wind needed a bit of encouragement to take one for The Emperor.
The corridors of the BBC will be littered with a few sake bottles over the next few weeks.
Mr. Rippon does seem to have been strapped in though: on SKY we have Liz McKean confirming a curious lack of curiosity on what he was overseeing (a BBC market rate talent trait, and odd for a ‘news’ entity), and a raft of contradiction and inaccuracy.
Mixing my Axis of Weevils analogies (and keeping Godwin out of his box) I wonder if this novel policy of sending the Jugend out as cannon fodder to shield the bunker dwellers is going to go down well… or work.
Defections may prove interesting.
A Downfall spoof is overdue.
The BBC’s ” famous investigative journalism .”
BBC producer, ” Are you a child molester ? ”
Jimmy Saville, ” No .”
BBC producer, ” case closed .”
It’s that famous BBC holding power to account.
I guess Paxo may have asked a few more times before closing the case too.
From what I’ve read Savile was more likely to say:
“I’m a pop star, at Aunty Beeb, who loves children, how can you even think that for one minute?”
rather than give a blunt “No”.
Savile seems to have enjoyed hinting.
And another thing …
I see that Adam Hart-Davis has been ‘persuaded’ to come out about his own naughtiness. Apparently he hugged a girl and she didn’t like it!
So are we going to see any other BBC types admitting to ‘offences’ that are so minor they are laughable and that to complain about them make it all seem a bit like a witch hunt?
Clever bastards aren’t they?
Anyone taking bets on who`ll be involved.
Dave Lee Travis and Paul Burnett?
John Peel?
Annie Nightingale?….
“Jeremy Paxman: A bad day for the BBC”
“Opening tonight’s Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman said it had been a ‘bad day’ for the BBC:-
“We are no further forward on the really important issue of whether the BBC and other organisations failed to protect vulnerable children from an aggressive, egotistical child molester called Jimmy Savile. This programme investigated the claims almost a year ago and never broadcast what it found out. That decision was taken by our editor and most of us knew nothing much about it until very recently.
“The Newsnight editor, incidentally, also had nothing to do with tonight’s programme because he is not around. But the BBC conceded today that his account of what happened was wrong in key claims. It has taken 20 days for the BBC to get around to acknowledging that.”
– JEREMY PAXMAN
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2012-10-22/jeremy-paxman-a-bad-day-for-the-bbc/?
‘the BBC conceded today that his account of what happened was wrong in key claims. It has taken 20 days for the BBC to get around to acknowledging that.
Remind me… who controls the edit suite?
Well, until they are further leaned on from above?
A week used to be a long time in politics.
Three weeks is a geological timeframe in TV news.
‘The Sun’:
“Jimmy Savile: BBC’s abuse of your licence fee.
“Cover-up anger at Newsnight ‘lies’ as Panorama piles pressure on bosses.”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article4604080.ece
‘THE BBC is facing a fresh cover-up row in the Jimmy Savile scandal after it was reported that its own lawyers stopped vital emails being shown on last night’s Panorama.’
So… the control of the edit suite again shapes the narrative?
There would appear to be truth, and the BBC’s unwholly version of it.
Still.
Propaganda backed by censorship.
The outcome of Savilegate?
The b-bbc will blame the victims, Iran will blame Israel, and we’ll all carry on as before.
‘The Independent’-
“‘Panorama has gone independent republic on this. There are old scores being settled.’
“As open warfare breaks out among BBC staff, Ian Burrell examines the divisions between its flagship news programmes.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/panorama-has-gone-independent-republic-on-this-there-are-old-scores-being-settled-8222007.html
ITN reporter asked Jeremy Paxman who was coming out of the BBC headquarters / Ministry of Truth building tonight.
ITN reporter ” Do you like the BBC being in the news headlines regarding Saville. ”
Jeremy Paxmann ” NO. I ask the questions, I don’t answer them.”
The arrogance, truculence and sense of self entitlement by Paxman was staggering.
Ps, He gets £800,000 for hosting Newsnight one day a week and £500,000 for University Challenge.
‘Jeremy Paxmann ” NO. I ask the questions, I don’t answer them.”’
Well Jezza, that may have to change.
Along with certain powers now being held to account when to now they have appeared to feel, along with some staff, they are unaccountable.
And trying to claim that the BBC can take some credit for a few staff having a bit of journalistic integrity, when the BBC as a whole moved heaven and earth to stop them and cover it all up, was as risible a bit of dissembling as I have ever heard.
To invoke Godwin, that’s like trying to pat the Downfall bunker dwellers on the back because von Stauffenberg at least had a bit of a stab at protest before they hung him on a meat hook.
you have to ask yourself which is the worse, the paedo rings at the bBC and Savillegate, or phone hacking?
don’t expect any Leveson -style enquiries anytime soon
Aye, Leha. I like the way the beeb said they couldn’t make comments as there was an enquiry going on.
I seem to remember them having top of the news comments day after day, week after week, month after month on Leveson……..as the enquiry was going on.
Newsnight interview
Jeremy Paxman ” You’re a criminal.”.
Conrad Black ” I’d like to punch your face.”
Comedy gold.
‘Jeremy Paxman ” You’re a criminal.”.
Not really a question.
Be interesting to see if he gets to share such information as it applies to others closer to home.
John Simpson has come out this week and said that the BBC covered up another pedophile ” Uncle Mac ” Derek McCulloch who died in 1967.
Simpson wrote about ‘Uncle Dick’. If it was McCulloch it could get nasty: he spent his whole career on children’s programmes;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_McCulloch
“Goodnight children, everywhere”
‘Daily Express’:
“‘IT JUST GETS WORSE EVERY DAY’…BBC BOSS STEPS ASIDE IN JIMMY SAVILE SCANDAL.”
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/353797/-It-just-gets-worse-every-day-BBC-boss-steps-aside-in-Jimmy-Savile-scandal
On Friday BBC radio 5 spent 9 hours taking about their favourite subject ” waaycism ” in football.
From that supercilious egotistical obnoxious little creep Nicky Campbell and his self righteous phone in show in the morning to Peter Allen’s Drivetime show.
God, it was mind numbingly tiresome. Yet they never mentioned Saville, Funny that, isn’t it ?
I used to work in an organisation, totally unconnected with either the media or the press I would add, where distancing oneself as far as possible, especially amongst senior management, was endemic and very expertly practiced on a massive scale and the presentation of sacrificial lambs for convenient public slaughter was an art form. By comparison they were absolute amateurs to the same skills as practiced by the BBC.
One thing is abundantly clear, even if it was glossed over quickly, is that what started out as an expose of Savile’s, and other’s, paedophilia and the involvement of the BBC in that, by people who were obvioulsy dedicated programme makers and disgusted by what had blatantly happened, was suddenly pulled by the heirarchy after they dicovered that the matter had been investigated by the police and that the CPS had blocked prosecution.
The BBC heirarchy suddenly saw an opening whereby they could reduce the exposure of their involvement and, in the process, focus attention on the police and CPS by looking for reason to attack them by implying there was some failure by them in preventing Savile’s activities thereby distracting people from questioning the BBC’s long lasting and disgraceful ostrich like complicity.
In other words, the BBC were hoping, by killing the Newsnight exposure, to eventually be able to bury the investigating Police Force and the CPS under a pile of manure whilst the BBC came up smelling of roses, a trick the BBC has proved itself to expert at in the very recent past.
I don’t think it even occured to the Newsnight team that this could backfire on the BBC. They were after damaging Saville to start off with (Tory, friend of Thatcher, Christian) but then they got a sniff at the possibility of damaging the police and CPS – a favorite pastime at the BBC.
That’s why Rippon became interested in the story in the first place. It wouldn’t suprise me at all if Rippon really was hanging on until more evidence against the CPS was found but I don’t think he would have spiked the story if none was found – that came after he told those higher up that he had a stick to beat the CPS with.
I think it was only when those higher up, with a clearer sense of BBC protectionism, caught hold of the story that the shit hit the fan and the cover up (re)started.
Never under estimate the ability of those lower down the chain of command to fail to see the bigger picture. It’s an age old story of management that the higher up the tree you go the more of the wood you can see.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2221613/Jimmy-Savile-victims-Compensation-claims-BBC-faces-allegations-censored-emails.html
Any unique funding around this episode will likely prove a tipping point for some.
One thing to get served inaccurate and incomplete news.
Paying market rate talent failure compo levels via compulsion to prop up the system that produces such a culture… I don’t think so.
Just saw the genetically pure Hugs Boaden live on SKY.
Asked if the BBC is in crisis, she has answered ‘No’.
Executive talent like that and her next backside-covering The Editors thread will be fun (as this blog consistently proves, with written evidence of inaccuracy), if they even open the comments feed.
What a limp, vague, unconvincing defence of his BBC by MARK EASTON, using this sort of language about what is supposed to be (but isn’t) an honest broadcaster accountable to the licence-payers:-
“Questions about who knew what and when have revealed something of the labyrinthine bureaucratic structures which operate at the BBC.
“For a start, the Chinese walls designed to protect the impartiality of its journalism can appear mystifying.”
Note how Easton tries to cling on to that deceitful, phoney mantra till the end:
-the implication is – ‘you licence-payer plebs don’t understand the complexity we Beeboids go through to fix the lies we engineer to report them under the guise of “impartiality.”‘
The whole thing is here:-
“Jimmy Savile – why BBC Panorama is investigating BBC Newsnight”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20031176
I rather thought they were reacting, 20 days too late, because they were caught with their frillies round their ankles, again, by other media, from The Oldie to ITV, and even the likes of the Indy, Gruan and Mirror were making nonsense of the ‘right wing plot’ claims.
So in the spirit of looking like they were doing something that they can control, which is all they know, they at last decided on… an internal navel gaze.
‘could undermine the credibility of BBC News.
Well, along with any this reporter might have had… long gone.
And so the fact Panorama is able to investigate editorial decisions within the Corporation is seen as evidence of a vital freedom.
Kicking and screaming into it, and now tearing each other apart trying to stay in the lifeboat… nice one. Seen by whom, exactly?
Can the public believe the level of ‘if we say it, someone will believe it’ delusion’ still on show is awesome in their senior editorial funny farm?
Actually, Mark, yes.
Time for a licence fee protest! Let’s get people together and refuse to pay this universal tax, at least until the results of the legal inquiry into the BBC produces the report. That will make this arrogant, self-important bunch sit up and take notice!
Earlier I questioned Rosa Prince’s odd sidebar.
She has redeemed herself:
“Astonishing that Entwistle is following BBC presenters on 5Live and Today in recent days in patting themselves on the back over last night’s Panorama programme.
He said no other media organisation would have engaged in such an investigation.
Simply not true, and the fact that Panorama investigated the Newsnight report is the minimum the Beeb could do. It certainly doesn’t, as Entwistle says, prove the health of BBC journalism.
That went out of the window when Newsnight disregarded its own journalists’ pleas to broadcast what they knew about Savile’s abuse.”
I might argue that a Beeboid follwing Beeboids in lauding Beeboids is ‘astonishing’.
Meanwhile, saying things that are ‘Not true’ is lying right?
Why am I compelled by law to fund a broadcast medium of questionable integrity when its CEO lies? Or, at best is self-delusional.
He heads the broadcaster that in theory educates and informs the country, for heaven’s sake!
Entwistle doing badly while being questioned by the Parliamentary committee. Asked not to do a deal with Rippon! As said before scapegoat being prepared!
For all of the froth and BBC’s pride that the Panorama programme proved ‘its health’. I thought it deceitful. Yes, Rippon seems to have been fingered, but the programme cleverly left ‘a get out of jail free’ card for themselves; an e-mail regarding CPS that was a precursor to and justification for Rippon to drop the story. They will rely on this to say there was no pressure to cover-up the Savile allegations.
There were of course three other e-mails that suggest the opposite; e-mails that Panorama chose not to share with us – ‘blocked’ by lawyers. In my experience lawyers do not block anything – they make recommendations. In the context of this programme, allegations against them and the gathering storm, the BBC were wrong not to disclose the contents.
This looks like cover-up upon cover-up.
Four years ago , it was Russell Brand that nearly brought about the end of the BBC.
But Savile has done much better.
Whoever Rupert has working undercover for him at the BBC is doing us all proud.
Lots of sad little pedalos in the Manchester Ship Canal all thinking that they`re re-enacting Dunkirk-but they`re sad little dress-up pirates in need of walking the plank!
It gets worse by the day for Peter Rippon. A Liz McKean email reported in The Independent:
The email, which has been seen by Channel 4 News, reportedly goes on to say: “Having commissioned the story, Peter Rippon keeps saying he’s lukewarm about it and is trying to kill it by making impossible editorial demands.”
MacKean then details Rippon’s excuses to the Newsnight team that worked on the story, saying: “When we rebut his points, he resorts to saying: well, it was 40 years ago… the girls were teenagers, not too young… they weren’t the worst kind of sexual offences etc”.
She goes on to write that she believes: “He hasn’t warned BBC1 about the story, so they’re beavering away on the special, oblivious.”
So he was in that QT audience when they excused the Bradford groomers as well?
“,,,the girls were teenagers, not too young…”
The BBC soon ‘fixed that’ for him, by giving him his own programme!
You’re terrible human beings, I hope you know that. I back the BBC 100% over this, whatever comes out.
Drive-by supporter of sexual abuse of young girls. Charming fans the BBC has.