BBC's hour of shame

The year 2012 has been, to borrow a phrase from the Queen of England, an “annus horribilus” for the media in the United Kingdom.

Just a year into the shocking phone-hacking scandal by the Rupert Murdoch- owned News of the World (NOW) which saw media baron Murdoch and his son James Murdoch grilled by a British Parliamentary Committee and Justice Leveson, and the NOW editor, Rebbekah Brooks, arrested, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is now at the heart of another shocking scandal.

The chilling question raging in British society is: did insiders in BBC shield and protect the late Jimmy Savile, a celebrity BBC chat show host, who allegedly sexually abused underage girls and women for decades on the BBC premises, at special needs schools, and in hospitals? Jimmy Savile described as “a devout Catholic, a friend of a former Tory Prime Minister and British Royalty” was the host of the programme called “Jim will fix it” on BBC. 

The BBC is being hauled over the coals over its decision to kill a Newsnight investigation which had been done by its own home-grown journalists in December 2011. The report had first-hand accounts from victims who were teenagers when they were abused by Savile and who are middle-aged women now. The question being asked is why had this powerful investigation not allowed to air? Who killed the story? Why was the BBC trying to protect the DJ over upholding its best journalistic standards? Who or who all in the BBC were responsible for this cover-up?

The scandal really burst forth when a rival British channel, ITV, aired a documentary that uncovered the allegations of child abuse and rape of underage girls by one of BBC’s star DJs for several decades. The story that BBC bosses had tried to suppress in their channel, was aired on a rival channel, the worst nightmare for any organisation that prides itself as being the best in the broadcasting business. Over 400 complaints of abuses have come in so far and they continue to pour in, according to the police. The British press and British civil society had its knives out for the Corporation that is publicly funded by a licence fee.

Even as BBC top brass tried to shield themselves in bureaucratic defences and cover each other’s backs, came another blow for the organisation. BBC’s own home grown investigative programme, Panorama, this week showed an expose of how BBC bosses had scuttled an investigation by Newsnight team. The programme had the producer and the journalist airing their views on how let down they had felt when their special investigation had just been axed.

Said reporter Liz MacKean: “All I can say is that there was an abrupt change of tone from one day “excellent, let’s prepare to get it on air” to hold on!” She was speaking of the inexplicable way the Newsnight investigation was dropped. “I was very unhappy about the statements put out by the Corporation on the nature of our investigations. The story we were investigating was very clear cut: it was about Jimmy Savile being a paedophile and abusing his position and using his status as a charity fund raiser and a television producer to get access to places where there were vulnerable teenage girls whom he would use. I was very unhappy when the story did not air as I felt I had a responsibility towards them. We had got them to talk to us and above all we believed what they were saying and for their stories not to be heard, I felt very bad as I felt I had let them down.”

Meirion Jones, producer of the Newsnight investigation, told the Panorama team: “We weren’t asked to get more evidence or get more people on camera; we were just asked to stop work on the story! I was sure that the story would come up one way or another and when it did the BBC would be accused of a cover-up. I sent a mail to Peter to say: “The story IS strong enough and the danger of not running it is substantial danger to BBC reputation”.

Helen Boaden, head of BBC News, whose annual take home salary was 350,000 GBP a year, is being seen as one of those who did not want the Newsnight investigation to be aired. At a dinner at Hilton Hotel in London she had reportedly she had told the Director General Entwistle in that if the report was allowed to air, it would ground BBC’s Christmas programmes planned to commemorate the now dead Jimmy Savile. A front-page three-column colour photograph in the Times newspaper this week of a beaming Boaden with Jimmy Savile very familiarly resting his head on her shoulder at a Radio Academy Hall of Fame lunch at the Savoy Hotel in 2006, does not do any favour to Boaden at this juncture when she is being seen as a BBC top brass that blocked the story. So far she has refused to comment on her role in the censorship. Investigations by rival channel, Channel 4, showed how the Editor of Newsnight, Peter Rippon, who had originally commissioned the story, had then stopped the story in its tracks in December. Peter Rippon has since “stepped aside” from Newsnight but till now no one has resigned or has been sacked till date in BBC.

Both the former Director General of BBC Mark Thompson (whose next job as the Chief Executive at the New York Times is now under a cloud) and the present Director General George Entwistle were in denial mode saying they knew nothing about the Newsnight investigation and, therefore, had no hand in killing it, have now had to concede after a direct attack by the journalists and producer working on the story saying that they were definitely in the know. Forced against the wall, the BBC top brass has now been forced to admit in public, after trying to deny responsibility in the initial phase, that it was a lost opportunity for the channel in not airing the report that had so much public interest.

“Terrifying” story

Just as in the phone hacking scandal of the Murdoch media pack, e-mails trails are surfacing here too which are providing the clues to this unacceptable cover-up. In an e-mail published, Liz MacKean’s writes to a friend: “My story is terrifying the bosses...having commissioned the story PR (Peter Rippon) is trying to kill it by making impossible editorial demands..the girls were teenagers so it is not as grave he is saying..he hasn’t warned BBC-1 about the story....”

On October 12, BBC DG, Entwistle had announced the setting up of two independent reviews within the organisation. He said: “Despite our efforts to make clear our belief that the decision to drop Newsnight investigation was taken properly for sound editorial reasons, people have continued to speculate. The BBC Executive Board and I have, therefore, ordered an immediate independent enquiry led by an external expert into whether there were any failings in the BBC management of the Newsnight investigation”. The second enquiry, he said, would look at the culture and practices of the BBC during the years that Jimmy Savile worked there and afterwards. “It will examine whether the culture and those practices allowed him or others to carry out the sexual abuse of children. It will also examine whether the BBC’s child protection, whistleblowing and bullying and harassment policies and practices are now fit for purpose; and whether there are any lessons from the illegal activities of Jimmy Savile or others for the BBC today in its operation of these policies and practices”.

The televised grilling of the BBC DG George Entwistle by the House of Commons Culture, Media, and Sports Select Committee showed up the BBC boss extremely poorly. His explanation that he hadn’t shown curiosity about the Newsnight programme when it had been mentioned to him by Helen Boaden, as he wanted to follow the due process in BBC and not interfere with journalistic department, provoked the committee to riddle holes into his ability to judge situations. “Were you going to ask that question? Should we give you the questions you should ask?” said one of the committee members to the BBC DG dripping with sarcasm, resulting in laughter all around at the meeting.

Jon Snow, one of UK’s most respected television anchors, said on ITN’s Channel 4 in his prime-time news programme that evening: “the BBC boss was a laughing stock tonight. In an interview with the Chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, Jon Snow grilled him on what he described as the “Byzantine” culture in the Corporation and wanted to know when heads would roll at the top in the BBC for what had happened. “As Chairman of the Trust your allegiance is to the people and not the BBC”, Snow reminded him. Patten had earlier defended Director General Entwistle and the Corporation and had come up for critique.

The BBC bosses have since admitted that it has many questions to answer. Critics say that there is a virtual “civil war” going on inside the BBC with journalists, senior editors, and the management all at loggerheads with one another over this shameful “cover-up”.

Crown prosecution

“This is a story that listened to the men and women in suits--so finely tuned to the management--couldn’t see the pain of the victims”, said an angry critic on television. While Prime Minister David Cameron described the Jimmy Savile revelations and allegations that BBC had tried to suppress its own investigation as “appalling” and has ordered the Crown prosecution to reopen the complaints against Jimmy Savile filed by victims in 1996, one of the harshest critiques came from Maria Miller, Culture Secretary, Conservative Party, who said the revelations are a matter of “deep concern, as very real concerns are being raised by people”. Ed Milliband, Opposition Labour leader, has asked for an independent investigation into the BBC-Jeremy Savile scandal so that the truth can come out without any internal pressures.

The Scotland Yard has described the number of complaints coming in as “staggering” and a “watershed moment” in abuse cases in UK. Suggestions that there was a “paedophile ring” in the places that Savile operated have sent shock waves, and arrests are imminent in coming days.

For now, the people most vindicated are the journalists whose stories had been killed. The producer of the Newsnight programme Meirion Jones said: “I have been asked not to give interviews but I am happy our story is out there”.

The last time BBC was in the eye of the storm was when it had aired the interview with Andrew Gilligan who said he had access to documents that had shown that the Tony Blair government had “sexed up” dossiers on weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and it resulted in the mysterious “suicide” of scientist David Kelly, resulting in a furore at that time.

This week there was also fresh legal action against the Daily and Sunday Mirror on alleged phone hacking filed by former England football manager Sven Goran Eriksson and three others. The British media have an uphill task in cleaning up their “rogue media”.

Meanwhile, the countdown has begun for the Leveson inquiry report that is expected within a month. There is heightened anticipation as to whether Justice Leveson will recommend any regulatory mechanism for the media for past misdeeds or stick to self-regulation. This latest criminal cover-up scandal does little to further the cause of free media.