Poor George
When the Savile/Newsnight story first broke, Raymond Snoddy feared for the Director General’s future and asked: “Could it be that the BBC will finally get, rather sooner than expected, what many people thought it should have had all along – its first woman director-general?” Today he sees no reason to change that view.
Let’s pause a moment in memory of Poor George. A decent man who worked with perfect respectability in the BBC for 23 years and pushed and dreamed like many in that strange organisation that one day he would be director-general.
Then he had the ultimate misfortune – of getting what he most wanted. Poor George.
He now must go down in broadcasting history as the 54-day DG – the man who failed completely to rise to two demanding challenges but instead was swept away by them: torn apart not just by back-bench MPs but by his own employee, John Humphrys.
Poor George even had to listen to David Mellor – who should perhaps be careful about casting the first stone – say that Winnie the Pooh would have done a better job.
We can’t condemn George Entwistle for wanting to run the BBC but Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, deserves considerable criticism for appointing him. Poor George was very much Lord Patten’s choice and it is very widely believed that he was chosen to do Patten’s bidding and in effect make the chairman look decisive by comparison. The very qualities Lord Patten saw in him were the very ones that led to disaster.
We will probably never know how Poor George could have done it quite so badly. The first Savile/Newsnight scandal was probably enough to see him off but the inquiries bought him a little time perhaps to restore a badly tattered reputation.
Given the fact that he was on his very last chance how could a former Newsnight editor completely ignore – again – what Newsnight was planning to do this time to the completely innocent Lord McAlpine and the fall-out from the broadcast. What were his immediate staff doing? Where was his director of communications – salary £156,000?
The final irony: Poor George was too busy working on a speech apologising for the Savile affair to realise that an even bigger apology was on the way.
Even BS – Before Savile – any attempt at an objective analysis of the runners and riders for the big prize did not lead to Entwistle, other than the fact that he seemed to have the backing of Patten.
There were two women who stood out from the mass. One was Caroline Thomson, the former chief operating officer of the BBC who was bundled out the door with indecent haste when Entwistle took over. Another successful BBC executive John Smith, chief executive of BBC Worldwide was treated in a similar way.
The other woman was Helen Boaden, director of news who had an entirely blameless career at the BBC and who was perhaps the more user friendly of the two. Alas Ms Boaden may have been implicated in the first Newsnight scandal and is up to her neck in the second and this morning has been asked to ‘step aside’ from her role pending an internal review.
So that leaves one.
Yet what is Lord Patten, a cat on his last life, planning to do? All the signs are the Trust is returning to an elaborate and costly selection procedure which will leave the headhunters licking their lips before Christmas.
All the information on those who applied last time is available and fresh. No magical outsider appeared last time and is it credible that anyone else would have the ability, the desire and the knowledge to sort out the mess the BBC is now in?
While other reputations have been shredded in recent weeks Caroline Thomson’s has been enhanced in two ways, one of them small but telling. When Poor George was too busy with Savile to go to Northern Ireland to see the last analogue transmitters being switched off Thomson deputised for him even though she was no longer a BBC employee and had reason to be bitter.
More important was her swan-song speech which made headlines. The BBC was too inward looking. The staff married each other, had affairs with each other and really should get out more. She also has the advantage of not actually being in the building when the place started to self-destruct.
It is obvious what should happen now. We have had enough of the BBC’s legendary processes thank you very much and anyway due process on the DG appointment has already been observed.
Lord Patten, who really can’t afford to appoint the wrong DG twice, should ask Caroline Thomson, on bended knee if necessary, if she will come to the Trust and tell them what she would do to sort out what now certainly is the worst crisis of trust and confidence in the Corporation’s history. If she has a credible plan she should get the job. It really is as simple as that.
As for the rest, David Mellor and others are saying Newsnight should be closed down forthwith. They are wrong. You do not throw away a 32-year tradition. You immediately appoint one of the BBC’s strongest editors to restore confidence although it has to be conceded such people are increasingly thin on the ground.
As for the BBC news hierarchy the future looks very bleak.
Poor George has one obvious merit. He is very honest, particularly about his own failings. So when he says that Newsnight Scandal 2 was properly referred up through the news chain of command up to and including management board level then we have to believe him.
In the normal scheme of things that would mean that Steve Mitchell, deputy head of news and his boss Helen Boaden together with BBC lawyers allowed the “shoddy” journalism to go out but now it is emerging that the controller of Radio 5 live, Adrian Van Klaveren, was in overall charge of the investigation and he reported to a member of the BBC’s management board, the BBC Northern Ireland controller Peter Johnston.
Perversely, the BBC has today asked both Boaden and Mitchell to step aside, whilst issuing a statement saying that it “wants to make absolutely clear that neither…had anything at all to do with the failed Newsnight investigation into Lord McAlpine.” They did however appear to have responsibility for the Savile/Newsnight failings.
The BBC release goes on to suggest it wants to find clarity, whilst surely compounding the confusion among every BBC-watcher and employee:
“While recognising this, the BBC also believes there is a lack of clarity in the lines of command and control in BBC News as a result of some of those caught up in the Pollard Review being unable to exercise their normal authority.”
If any of the above are deemed responsible then one of the first tasks of acting DG Tim Davie could be to accept a raft of resignations. If that happens then Peter Horrocks would be a shoo-in to run the news division.
What now for Poor George? After a period of reflection perhaps Holy Orders might suit. After all an oil man has just become Archbishop of Canterbury.