* BBC Trust head says changes must be made
* Director general quit over “shoddy” journalism
* PM Cameron says crisis serious but BBC can recover
* Murdoch and others will try to take advantage, Trust says
By Michael Holden and Kate Holton
LONDON, Nov 12 (Reuters) – Britain’s BBC could be doomed
unless it makes radical changes, the head of its governing trust
said, after its director general quit to take the blame for the
airing of false child sex abuse allegations against a former
politician.
BBC Trust chairman Chris Patten said on Sunday confidence
had to be restored if the publicly funded corporation was to
withstand pressure from rivals, especially Rupert Murdoch’s
media empire, which would try to take advantage of the turmoil.
“If you’re saying, ‘Does the BBC need a thorough structural
radical overhaul?’, then absolutely it does, and that is what we
will have to do,” Patten, a one-time senior figure in Prime
Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party and the last British
governor of Hong Kong, told BBC television.
“The basis for the BBC’s position in this country is the
trust that people have in it,” Patten said. “If the BBC loses
that, it’s over.”
George Entwistle resigned as director general on Saturday,
just two months into the job, to take responsibility for the
child sex allegation on the flagship news programme Newsnight.
The witness in the Newsight report, who says he suffered
sexual abuse at a care home in the late 1970s, said on Friday he
had misidentified the politician, Alistair McAlpine. Newsnight
admitted it had not shown the witness a picture of McAlpine, or
approached McAlpine for comment before going to air.
Already under pressure after revelations that a long-time
star presenter, the late Jimmy Savile, was a paedophile,
Entwistle conceded on the BBC morning news that he had not known
– or asked – who the alleged abuser was until the name appeared
in social media.
The BBC, celebrating its 90th anniversary, is affectionately
known in Britain as “Auntie”, and respected around much of the
world.
But with 22,000 staff working at eight national TV channels,
50 radio stations and an extensive Internet operation, critics
say it is hampered by a complex and overly bureaucratic and
hierarchical management structure.
THOMPSON’S LEGACY
Journalists said this had become worse under Entwistle’s
predecessor Mark Thompson, who took over in the wake of the last
major crisis to hit the corporation and is set to become chief
executive of the New York Times Co on Monday.
In that instance, both director general and chairman were
forced out after the BBC was castigated by a public inquiry over
a report alleging government impropriety in the fevered build up
to war in Iraq, leading to major organisational changes.
One of the BBC’s most prominent figures, Newsnight presenter
Jeremy Paxman, said since the Iraq report furore, management
had become bloated while cash had been cut from programme
budgets.
“He (Entwistle) has been brought low by cowards and
incompetents,” Paxman said in a statement, echoing a widely-held
view that Entwistle was a good man who had been let down by his
senior staff.
Prime Minister Cameron appeared ready to give the BBC the
benefit of the doubt, believing that “one of the great
institutions of this country” could reform and deal with its
failings, according to sources in his office.
Patten, who must find a new director general to sort out the
mess, agreed that management structures had proved inadequate.
“Apparently decisions about the programme went up through
every damned layer of BBC management, bureaucracy, legal checks
– and still emerged,” he said.
“One of the jokes I made, and actually it wasn’t all that
funny, when I came to the BBC … was that there were more
senior leaders in the BBC than there were in the Chinese
Communist Party.”
Patten ruled out resigning himself but other senior jobs are
expected to be on the line, while BBC supporters fear
investigative journalism will be scaled back. He said he
expected to name Entwistle’s successor in weeks, not months.
Among the immediate challenges are threats of litigation.
McAlpine, a close ally of former Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher, has indicated he will sue for damages.
Claims for compensation are also likely from victims who say
Savile, one of the most recognisable personalities on British
television in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, sexually abused them as
children, sometimes on BBC premises.
INQUIRIES
Two inquiries are already under way, looking at failures at
Newsnight and allegations relating to Savile, both of which
could make uncomfortable reading for senior figures.
Police have also launched a major inquiry into Savile’s
crimes and victims’ allegations of a high-profile paedophile
ring. Detectives said they had arrested their third suspect on
Sunday, a man in his 70s from Cambridgeshire in central England.
Funded by an annual licence fee levied on all TV viewers,
the BBC has long been resented by its commercial rivals, who
argue it has an unfair advantage and distorts the market.
Murdoch’s Sun tabloid gleefully reported Entwistle’s
departure with the headline “Bye Bye Chump” and Patten said News
Corp and others would put the boot in, happy to deflect
attention after a phone-hacking scandal put the newspaper
industry under intense and painful scrutiny.
He said that “one or two newspapers, Mr. Murdoch’s papers”
would love to see the BBC lose its national status, “but I think
the great British public doesn’t want to see that happen”.
Murdoch himself was watching from afar.
“BBC getting into deeper mess. After Savile scandal, now
prominent news program falsely names senior pol as paedophile,”
he wrote on his Twitter website on Saturday.
It is not just the BBC and the likes of Entwistle and Patten
who are in the spotlight.
Thompson, whom Entwistle succeeded in mid-September, has
also faced questions from staff at the New York Times over
whether he is still the right person to take one of the biggest
jobs in American newspaper publishing.
Britain’s Murdoch-owned Sunday Times queried how Thompson
could have been unaware of claims about Savile during his tenure
at the BBC as he had told British lawmakers, saying his lawyers
had written to the paper addressing the allegations in early
September, while he was still director general.
