Chaos, confusion and nailing wise sayings to the newsroom wall
One of the most interesting aspects of the Pollard inquiry into the Jimmy Savile Newsnight scandal does not appear in the report itself but is a response to it.
The 54-day former BBC director-general George Entwistle says he is happy to have been cleared of any suggestion that he tried to influence Newsnight editor Peter Rippon to pull the Savile investigation.
That’s not really a surprise because as we all know now George wasn’t curious enough to find out much about the issue in the first place.
What is interesting is that George tells how he took the decision to resign as director-general “because I thought it was important to take responsibility, as head of the organisation, for the mistakes Newsnight made.”
George at least took responsibility even though his resignation might have been required if it had not been offered.
The big surprise about the Pollard (and linked MacQuarrie) Newsnight inquiries is that despite toe-curling and often devastating revelations of managerial incompetence, not a single person has been sacked.
Only one, the 63-year-old Stephen Mitchell, the deputy director of news, is leaving the BBC but it is not even clear whether it is a retirement or a resignation.
Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, called it a retirement.
Mitchell happens to be one of the most decent and honourable of BBC executives with an unblemished BBC career of more than 38 years. Pollard points out, however, that it was Mitchell, normally the most cautious and punctilious of men, who removed Newsnight’s Savile investigation from the BBC’s list of high risk stories, but couldn’t remember why.
The old BBC joke about how to deal with a crisis – deputy heads will roll – has to be trotted out because that is what has now happened.
One person leaving “next year,” even though Pollard found nothing but managerial “chaos and confusion” among executives when faced with one of the worst crises in the BBC’s history, scarcely seems an appropriate response.
As for all the rest, it’s a case of musical chairs with no further chairs being removed. In fact it is at least likely that the incoming director-general, Lord Tony Hall, will add another senior chair – a deputy director-general and head of news.
Mark Byford was the last person to occupy such a role, and he had his critics – but there was more than a chance he might have got a grip on the situation had his position not been axed in a showy move to demonstrate managerial costs were being cut.
Leaving aside the details – though many of them are fascinating – Pollard has produced an eloquent litany of managerial failures, many of them endemic and structural.
It was a management system that “proved completely incapable” of dealing with the crisis. Leadership and organisation seemed to be in “short supply.”
There was an apparent “adherence to rigid management chains and a reluctance to bypass them.”
And that’s before you get to the only partial sharing of information across departments and – Pollard phrases this bit in a diplomatic manner – “some instances of person animosity” within the BBC.
Surely not, Nick. It’s much worse than that.
The criticism of Helen Boaden, director of news and not so long ago a serious candidate to become the first woman director general, is severe.
She is cleared of trying to put “undue pressure” on Rippon to drop the Savile investigation but could have shown more leadership.
It was “inappropriate” for her to have raised the issue briefly with Entwistle after an awards lunch. It was too casual, too fleeting and left uncertainty about the outcome.
Part of her department was in “virtual meltdown” and she should, Pollard suggests, have been more active in trying to resolve things.
“I think that, given her position, she should have taken greater responsibility,” the former head of Sky News concludes.
Yet Boaden, again after an unblemished career at the BBC, returns as director of BBC News almost as if nothing had happened.
Boaden did indeed try to do the honourable thing at the outset and offered her resignation to Entwistle. It was declined.
Given the enormity of the cultural change now needed in the organisation and structure of BBC News, the question has to be asked if the person who presided over the recent chaos is the person best to change the organisation.
There is no desire for a witch-hunt, but should Boaden not have joined the others in pursuing a different opportunity within the BBC?
In the end it is impossible to have a totally “fair and proportionate” response as acting DG Tim Davie put it. Reality often intervenes in such a process.
Credibility can simply seep away and when that happens it is difficult to restore.
Nearly half the population said in polls last month they had lost at least some measure of trust in BBC journalism. Trust comes and goes in response to events but the actions taken by the BBC Trust and senior management in response to the Pollard inquiry is unlikely to be seen as sufficient to meet the gravity of the current crisis.
The slightly alarming thing is that the announcements were almost certainly discussed with, and cleared by, the director-general in waiting Tony Hall.
If so, he is under-estimating the scale of the problem he faces, demonstrated, beyond doubt, by Nick Pollard.
It may be that this week’s announcements are merely the holding operation; the necessary response to events and obvious flaws.
Hall has three months to draw up his own proposals for change and we may yet have a Spring reshuffle at the top of the BBC. Until then it would be wise to remember some of the sayings of Nick Pollard on how the BBC can restore trust.
He calls it a journalist’s take on some of the lessons to be learned from the Savile experience.
Hire good journalists and have faith in them. Gather credible evidence and rely on it. Have editorial executives who inspire confidence and loyalty in programme staff. Insist on mature and open discussions about the strength of stories. Be prepared to hand over a story to another programme if it needs more work.
Don’t let a poisonous atmosphere develop on programme teams.
The sayings of Pollard should now be nailed to the wall of the BBC Newsroom.