Andrew Gilligan let’s rip at BBC ‘management’….possibly though a little bitter about Hutton, and himself being blamed for the sexing up of his report…..he was though to blame wasn’t he? It was him speaking not Greg Dykes.
However back to today………
The standard rule in a media storm is to put one person in charge and to establish the facts quickly. The standard BBC rule is to put nobody in charge and to find someone other than senior management to take all the blame. An internal inquiry into the Hutton fiasco concluded that I, the most junior person involved, was wholly responsible. I did wonder why, if that was genuinely the case, the BBC’s management had ever come to my defence in the first place. The fact was, we were all responsible.
And now everyone, from the director-general, George Entwistle, on down is dumping on the editor of Newsnight, Peter Rippon, for what, we’re told, was his sole decision to drop the Savile report. He’s already become a BBC unperson, his name removed from the Newsnight credits.
But blaming it all on Rippon is simply not plausible. His team’s film was strong. They had been working on it for weeks; there were no legal risks. Yet within days, Rippon performed a 180-degree turn – from eager enthusiasm to curt dismissal – for reasons that seemed flimsy, even before they were shown to be untrue. It is hard to imagine that his superiors played no part in this process – but proving it will be another matter.
The thing about Rippon is that he almost certainly wasn’t in charge. At ITN, or Sky, or any newspaper, there’s a clear chain of command. The buck really does stop with the editor. But the editor of any BBC programme has the stale breath of at least five different bosses over his shoulder. That helps all those bosses, of course, avoid the blame when there’s a crisis. But it also makes for the kind of terrible, unfocused decision-making that causes crises in the first place.
In Savilegate, there probably wasn’t a smoking email with some top boss ordering the story off air – instead, there will have been conversations in corridors between Peter and Helen, or Helen and Steve, or George and Mark.
[There are] serious questions about George Entwistle’s suitability to run anything. As the Panorama special on Savile showed, some of the BBC’s reporters are lions. But they really are led by donkeys.
Johnny L Lee (whoever he is) seems to agree that management leaned on Rippon in the quietest way on Twitter to Derbyshire:
Johnny L Lee @JohnnyLee14 @vicderbyshire we all know how invisible leaning works in television
In my company, it’s the management that shoulders the responsibility if things go wrong. They are paid higher salaries to use their judgment and experience to guide the decisions upon which the survival of the business stands or falls. The BBC on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have management in the conventional sense of the word, just a bunch of overpaid bureaucrats whose skill is devoted to climbing the greasy pole and scapegoating blame whilst feathering their own nest at taxpayers expense whilst remaining totally unaccountable to anyone it seems. Time to close it down.
I would like to translate “Conversations in corridors”
BBC executives’ lives, careers and sense of importance are dependent on their Master (the BBC) retaining its reputation. They serve, not the public who funds them or the audience who watches and listens to them, but the corporate entity that pays their mortgages, gives them status and earns them their honours and knighthoods. Everything must done to control any perceived damage.
Like members of every other such organisation (usually government funded) their advancement is dependent on the benevolence of elites rather than the genuine achievement of its members.
The mechanism for this invisible control is “meetings in corridors”. Minutes of such meetings are kept in thin air. No attribution. Just whispers and knives. Winks and nods. “Leave it to me, I’ll handle it, old boy.”
Former radio press officer Rodney Collins claims that the late Douglas Muggeridge, a former Radio 1 controller, knew of the allegations involving Jimmy Savile and underage girls. But Muggeridge asked Collins an interesting question. Not, “Is it true? Are we part of his procurement plan? What can we do to get rid of this guy?” No! The question Muggeridge asked was: “what are the possibility that claims are going to appear in the Press.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2212335/Jimmy-Savile-sex-abuse-allegations-Radio-1-boss-Douglas-Muggeridge-knew-1970s.html#ixzz2AMD4hhXp
When pirate radio was absorbed into the BBC and morphed into Radio One, the BBC inherited the cesspool that was British pop music. Twerps became heroes. The Archbishop of Canterbury debated the existence of God with Adam Faith. BBC executives simpered and sucked up to men (DJs) with minimal talent and vast egos. Youth culture was (and is) lauded. Age and experience took a back seat. Swinging Britain was personified in the disc jockey – who was nothing more than a verbal conjunction (“And now here’s the next record”.) How the elites fawned over these dreadful people! Remember the claim – the boast – by Tony Blackburn that he had slept with 500 women?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9237679/Tony-Blackburn-I-reached-half-Bill-Roaches-tally-of-1000-women.html
Now Anthea Turner also has made allegations (as yet unproven) against Bruno Brooks
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5246/Anthea-attack-claims-untrue.html
So has newsreader Vivien Creegor against DLT.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2217746/BBC-sex-scandal-We-groped-Dave-Lee-Travis-claim-BBC-women-sex-abuse-scandal-deepens.html
These stories will be dismissed as: “the girls have only themselves to blame, they were gagging for it.” or probably dismissed with the claim it was all simply high jinks. But in the culture of “meetings in corridors” victims don’t stand a chance of justice. For people who have sold their souls to the corporate god (BBC, Catholic Church, Political Party) the corporation or company or religion is greater than the individual.
There’ll be excuses from Vanessa Feltz and mea culpas from Esther Rantzen. Videos of “Jim’ll Fix It” will be locked down in the BBC vaults – and Savile will be airbrushed from history. (Anyone remember Chris Denning? ) (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7291723/Radio-1-DJ-jailed-for-paedophilia-claims-offences-were-consensual.html)
While Savile committed crimes, others who made up the culture of sexual abuse and corporate bullying are also culpable. Are “conversations in corridors” to blame? You bet.
Meanwhile how will the British licence payer feels about funding the legal fees and payouts to the hundreds of victims?
Good post: I might add that the connections of Denning with Jonathan king and Gary Glitter just add to the sinister direction all this is taking.
I can understand the silence at Al Beeb mosque at the moment since 95% of the employees are probabally away on the Hajj.
‘ The BBC created Savile. It gave him the platform …. It appears to have known or suspected what he was doing, and turned a blind eye, for four decades. ‘
To me a key point as the ‘smart strategists’ cast about for a line to take and brief the next generation of re-named cherry vultures.
Whatever else may yet transpire, the most trusted media monopoly in the world created him, facilitated him… and until forced into the open from within, covered up for him and those around his activities.
Sheep and back-stabbing weasels ‘led’ by £400k buck-passing jackals, more like.
All supported, still, by a unique. compelled £145.50pa, each.
‘ until forced into the open from within’ , I don’t understand because I thought it was ITN who opened the whole thing up. The BBC of course was trying to bury it by cancelling Newsnight.
The are a variety of threads to this whole sorry affair.
There are of course the alleged crimes themselves, when they happened, their duration and what transpired, or did not.
Then there is the eventual coverage of Mr. Savile’s life. And cover-ups.
It appears there were two, but which came first I am not so sure.
One was a series of homages post mortem. Entertainment lite to keep the sheeple happy. Cheap, dumb. No-brainer.
Then there was the darker one, which originated within Newsnight (by Liz McKean?). Controversial. Gritty. Damaging.
It started. Then stopped.
A civil war started within the BBC. And a lid was kept on it. Initially.
I think this was first broken by The Oldie, but by this time ITN may have picked up on the work and witnesses, and ran with it the whole 9 yards.
The rest, as they say, is history, if one still evolving, much as the BBC and its glee clubs may wish it would not, and are doing their best to shut down, rewrite, discredit or move on from.
As with most of their ‘news’ output.
Another right wing rag piles on the pressure…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/bbc-directorgeneral-george-entwistle-tried-to-move-helen-boaden-from-news-department-8227386.html
‘..offering the Corporation’s Director of News Helen Boaden a fresh role in radio – but she turned the job down’
Smart call, Hugs.
You should have warned us about the nauseating picture on that Independent page. The grinning face of a national disgrace, one of the worst people ever to work at the bBBC, alongside Jimmy Savile.
🙂
Funny Hugs should crop up, given her often stellar outings on The Editors, when her threads really didn’t do that well and usually closed when things unfolded not necessarily to her advantage.
Speaking of which..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2012/10/jimmy_savile_and_newsnight_a_c.html
I am shocked… shocked I tell you, that this thread, on a now obviously no longer topical (well, other than being headlined in most national media today again), has been closed to further comment… amazingly just shy of the new page.
Aunty you minx… you are not even pretending any more, are you?
“Another right wing rag…”
I take it you’re being sarcastic? Since when was “The Independent” ever right wing?
Some keep saying I show a low form of wit.
‘I take it you’re being sarcastic?
Let’s just leave it at that.
“BBC news is proud of its long and distinguished record of producing strong investigative journalism including recently Panorama’s Fifa’s Dirty Secrets and Winterbourne View exposés.”
Am I imagining it or didnt Panorama simply give investigative journalist Andrew Jennings a TV platform for his book about the goings on at FIFA? Not really hard work for the BBC was it?
In other ‘news’:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/oct/25/new-york-times-mark-thompson-jimmy-savile1?
‘Arthur Sulzberger Jr says incoming chief executive played no role in dropping of sex abuse report while he was at the BBC’
Wow, maybe he should take over the current police investigation, about which we, including the now very credulous investigative Graun, still have been told nothing.
The staff at the NYT, and their readers, must be relieved this is the level of news ‘management’ they can expect.
Meanwhile, closer to home..
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/354611/John-Bishop-to-gloss-over-Jimmy-Savile-scandal-in-BBC-round-up-of-years-events
‘COMEDIAN John Bishop has been asked by the BBC to carry out a round-up of the year’s highs and lows but is set to gloss over the Jimmy Savile scandal
Experience as a HIGNFY moderator was probably a factor in his being selected for this role?
” New York Times proprietor clears Mark Thompson over Jimmy Savile scandal”
well, well, what a supersleuth this guy must be. He has already solved this case!
or is it more a case of: well he would say that wouldn’t he?
Perhaps the Graun can share with us the evidence upon which he has single handedly cleared thompson.
Or do you think maybe it went along the lines of the Chinnery chat with saVILE. All over in 2 sentences.
They`re brilliant aren`t they?
Heard a bit of Feedback-apparently everybody says that there`s been too much on Savilegate( baby gate of course).
Meanwhile-Leveson, Lords Reform, Murdoch baiting and other BBC obsessions-presuming that the “public” can`t get enough of these stories.
The BBC always end up getting it right don`t they?
There is not nearly enough about Savile-and, until the likes of Boaden and Patten are gone, Jimmy will have abused his position in vain.
Muck out the barn-we critical friends of the BBCs favoured broadcaster(1964-2011) demand that Saviles hideous life may yet serve a higher purpose!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9637079/Jimmy-Savile-Newsnight-investigation-halted-two-days-after-BBC-Christmas-schedule-announced.html
I wonder what ‘beliefs’ those within the BBC may have on this, vs. those from the Planet Earth.
The real scandal that the BBC are still trying to avoid anybody focussing on!
Anybody not convinced of BBC complicity enabling this scum faced pervert to perpetrate his abuse need only watch this video.
Clearly the cameraman pans in for a close-up on Savile when realising what he’s doing to this girl.
And to think people are forced to pay for these degenerates. Shows why our society is going down the toilet.
Caught on camera: Jimmy Savile gropes terrified teenage girl as he presents Top Of The Pops
*Sylvia Edwards can been seen trying to flee from grinning Savile
*Claims a BBC employee told her to ‘get lost’ when she complained
*Presenter mauls her and grabs her bottom as terrified teenager shrieks
Defenders of the indefensible will remain silent, only to chime in elsewhere demanding proof of anyone who claims that lots of people at the BBC knew about it.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPxs-MynWaU?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360%5D
Qui Bono?
Who benefited from the cancellation?
Two glaring possibilities: 1. The BBC, because it had devoted so much time and effort into the Savile smarm fests, the tribute programmes, which ultimately ran.
How could they run, if the NEWSNIGHT show went ahead first?
2. The Paedo Ring at the BBC, very briefly mentioned in the recent PANORAMA show. Is it still there? Who? How long? If not still there, are they on fat pensions somewhere else?
I find it incredibly difficult to believe no one knew about this. After all in television, we are talking of producers, directors and assistants, trainees, scene shifters, painters, carpenters, electricians, cameramen, make up, props, more assistants, photographers, lighting, audience control, drivers, all these moved and shuffled about the corridors, dressing rooms, cafeterias, studios, rehearsal rooms and all this for decades. It’s time for all to come out of the woodwork, and to give evidence: not to the legal firm hired by the BBC, (Reed Smith) to coach the staff as to what to say and how to say it, in the upcoming enquiries, (The Pollard enquiry is hardly likely to produce results: as Pollard went onto Sky News this is true, but only after working at the BBC for 13 YEARS! ONCE BIASED ALWAYS BIASED!) But most probably to someone impartial: I suggest Channel 4 or ITN. Who can we trust anymore? Murdoch? It certainly ain’t the BBC.