THE BBC’s Director General has refused fresh calls for him to quit following a
disastrous Newsnight report falsely linking a senior Tory politician to a
child sex abuse scandal.
George Entwistle was humiliated by one of his own presenters on live radio as
he admitted he did not know in advance that the BBC2 current affairs show
was planning the report.
He also admitted he did not read newspaper and internet reports on Friday
revealing that the story was untrue.
Former Conservative party treasurer Lord McAlpine is planning to sue the BBC
for libel after he was smeared on the internet following Newsnight’s claim a
week ago that an unnamed senior Tory raped boys from a care home in Wrexham.
The
Corporation apologised last night after the victim Steve Messham said he
had wrongly identified his attacker and Lord McAlpine was innocent.
Today Mr Entwistle – already under fire over his handling of the Jimmy Savile
abuse scandal – said on Radio 4’s Today programme that the Newsnight report
was “unacceptable” and should never have been broadcast.
But he was mauled by host John Humphrys as he insisted he should not
necessarily have known about it before it was transmitted.
The Director General said he did not watch the show last Friday night because
he was out, and astonishingly claimed he had no knowledge of what it would
cover.
That was despite widespread speculation after one of the journalists behind
the report tweeted last Friday morning that Newsnight was planning to out a
Tory politician as a paedophile.
Asked why he failed to ask key questions before the programme was aired, the
BBC boss said: “The film was not drawn to my attention before
transmission.
“Not every film and not every piece of journalism made inside the BBC is
referred to the editor in chief.”
Mr Humphrys said the DG “must have known” because of the
journalist’s tweet “telling the world beforehand that something was
going to happen on Newsnight, that night, that would reveal extraordinary
things about child abuse and that would involve a senior Tory figure from
the Thatcher years.”
Mr Entwhistle said: “I didn’t see that tweet, John. I’m afraid this tweet
was not brought to my attention.
“So I found out about this film after it went out. In the light of what
happened here I wish this was referred to me.”
The DG also revealed he had not bothered to read The Guardian’s front page
article on Friday morning revealing errors in the Newsnight investigation
that sparked the damaging rumours about Lord McAlpine.
He said: “I only found out yesterday when I saw him (Mr Messham) make his
apology to Lord McAlpine that there must be doubts about his testimony.”
Mr Humphrys tore into his boss for not seeking out the information himself –
particularly after the furore surrounding Newsnight’s shelving of a report
that would have exposed Jimmy Savile’s crimes.
The presenter said: “So there is no natural curiosity, you wait for
somebody to come along to you and say ‘Excuse me Director General, but this
is happening and you may be interested’?
“You don’t look for yourself, you don’t do what everybody else in the
country does, read newspapers, listen to everything that’s going on and say
‘What’s happening here?'”
Mr Entwistle said he reacted “the second” he learned of Mr Messham’s
statement, adding: “We should not have put out a film that was so
fundamentally wrong. What happened here is completely unacceptable.”
He has banned all new investigations on Newsnight pending a probe into what
went wrong and warned staff could be sacked if they made mistakes.
Mr Entwistle’s comments drew derision from commentators who likened him to a
“man in a pit digging himself even deeper”.
George Carey, the journalist who founded Newsnight 32 years ago, told Sky News
that Entwistle may not survive the latest crisis facing the programme.
He said it looked as though the Director General was “relying on the
system” rather than being pro-actively in charge.
“If the conjunction of Newsnight and paedophilia does not ring an alarm
bell to someone who calls himself the editor in chief then nothing will.
“There’s been a week of this rumbling away, yet George seems to have
stood back from this and relied on the system, rather than picking up the
phone (to find out what was happening).”
The BBC Trust, which oversees the broadcaster, expressed its own horror and
ordered the director general to establish why the Newsnight report went so
badly wrong.
A spokesman said: “This is a deeply troubling episode.
“The Trust has impressed upon the director general the need to get to the
bottom of this as a matter of the utmost urgency and will expect appropriate
action to be taken as quickly as possible.”