‘No evidence of BBC cover-up over Savile’

Nick Pollard speaks during a press conference at New Broadcasting House in London yesterday.

DPA/London

The BBC displayed a lack of leadership and organisation and “proved completely incapable” of dealing with the scandal surrounding child abuse allegations against its late presenter, Jimmy Savile, a report published yesterday said.

It said the BBC’s decision in late 2011 to drop a Newsnight TV programme into the allegations made against the now deceased Savile was “seriously flawed” and had triggered “the worst management crisis in the BBC’s history”.

The BBC management system had “proved completely incapable of dealing” with the issues raised by the axing of the story and “the level of chaos and confusion was even greater than was apparent at the time”, said the report, compiled by former Sky News executive Nick Pollard.

However, the Newsnight programme was dropped “in good faith” - and not because the BBC wanted to “protect” a special Christmas tribute it planned to air on Savile, who had died in October, 2011, aged 84.

“Newsnight got the story right and had clear evidence that Savile was a paedophile,” said Pollard. But there was “no evidence of a cover-up” in the decision to axe the programme.

The investigation of more than 10,000 e-mails and dozens of documents indicated that George Entwistle, the BBC director-general who stepped down over the scandal, had “knowledge of the dark side of Jimmy Savile”, said the report.

Entwistle, who was formerly head of television at the BBC, resigned over the scandal and its consequences in November.

In a separate investigation, the same Newsnight programme was found guilt of breaching the BBC’s own editorial guidelines by wrongly implicating a former Conservative politician, Alistair McAlpine, in a child abuse scandal in Wales in the 1980s.

The BBC has already paid compensation to McAlpine to settle possible libel claims out of court.

Police say they believe Savile carried out an unprecedented number of sex offences, and suspect him of involvement in 199 crimes mostly involving children, including 31 rapes.

The scandal which dominated headlines in Britain through October and November resulted in the resignation of its director general just 54 days into his job and provoked awkward questions for his predecessor Mark Thompson, who recently took over as chief executive of the New York Times.

Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, the publicly funded broadcaster’s governing body, said the allegation that Newsnight investigation had been dropped because it clashed with the corporate interests of the broadcaster was extremely serious.

He told reporters the claim “went right to the heart of the BBC’s reputation, integrity, and the trust which we depend on. We took the allegations exceptionally seriously”.

The accusations against Savile were finally brought to light by rival broadcaster ITV and some 450 people have since come forward with information about to Savile to detectives.

The report, by a former head of rival Sky News, said the former head of BBC Events had emailed George Entwistle in 2010 to discuss whether the BBC should prepare an obit for Savile at the time of his death. A second email to Entwistle referred to the “darker side of the story”.

Another email said: “I’d feel v queasy about an obit. I saw the real truth!!!!”

Entwistle, who was at the time the BBC’s Controller of Knowledge Commissioning, said he did not recall the email. He went on to replace Thompson as director general but stood down after 54 days when he failed to get to grips with the problem.

The BBC Trust said it accepted the report in full and would implement all its recommendations for better management.

“The decision to drop the original investigation was flawed and the way it was taken was wrong but I believe it was done in good faith,” the report said. “It was not done to protect the Savile tribute programmes or for any improper reason.”