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The BBC Car Crash Rolls on: Entwistle's Resignation Must Have the Rest of the Media Cackling

Posted: 12/11/2012 00:00

So, BBC director general George Entwistle has resigned after a record low of 54 days in the job. I can't help but feel a little bit sorry for him; he's had one sh*t-storm after the other, and it must be nauseating to kiss goodbye to your £450,000 a year salary before you've even upgraded your mobile phone contract. His appearance just before his resignation on Radio 4's Today programme, however, in which John Humphrys interviewed him in the manner of a cruel schoolboy stabbing a writhing fish in a bucket, was uncomfortable to say the least: "Did you see the film the night it was broadcast?" "No, I was out." "Did you read the Guardian's front page yesterday?" "No, I was giving a speech." Amidst the stuttering and spluttering, Humphrys pinned down Entwistle to such a degree that - rightly or wrongly - he came across as absent and incompetent.

I have a growing sense that the rest of the media are mirthlessly rubbing their hands together while watching the omnibenevolent BBC stumble and fall, get up, shoot itself in the foot, and then fall over again. The BBC are always the impeccable good guys, the license-fee kingpins who perennially toe the line and hold everyone else to account, and those who were live-streamed on the BBC website squirming in their Leveson chairs are probably relishing even slightly the thought of Newsnight et al getting a dose of castigating headlines and glaring scrutiny.

Incidentally it's been quite interesting, if not bizarre, to see the BBC adamantly play out its accountability virtue in a kind of twisted labyrinthine pseudo-parodying meta-journalism. There were Jimmy Savile's sexual abuses at the BBC, which the BBC reported on from outside the BBC, with archive footage obtained from the BBC, and questions over whether the BBC was right to allow such practices at the BBC. Then BBC's Newsnight programme was outed for not airing an investigation into Jimmy Savile's abuses at the BBC because the BBC was airing a tribute programme to him at the time. BBC Newsnight reporters criticised their BBC Newsnight editor Peter Rippon who then stepped down, before BBC veteran John Simpson waded in to say the BBC was facing its 'worst crisis' in fifty years. BBC's Panorama then investigated BBC's Newsnight, and then BBC's Newsnight jumped the gun and decided they'd better broadcast something, so they put out a programme which falsely implicated Tory peer Lord McAlpine in child sexual abuse. The victim of the abuse then appeared on BBC news to say he'd got it wrong, so BBC Newsnight was back in the slaughterhouse. BBC Director General George Entwistle then gave that fist-eating interview on BBC's Today before announcing his resignation from the BBC on the BBC news channel.

What next for the great British Broadcasting Corporation? I predict that this car crash will play out, more heads will roll and the internal and external torrent of frenzied accusations will inevitably dry to a trickle. But I think it's important to remember that the BBC has produced excellent journalism, and in the scheme of things, a couple of (albeit very) bad decisions on Newsnight don't constitute the abolishment of the programme or of the BBC's entire ninety-year-old reputation. Compared with the nebulous virtue of print media, Newsnight made journalistic and editorial errors while newspapers involved with the hacking scandal made moral ones.

Savile must be turning in his grave, but only to light up a cigar and have a chuckle at it all...

 

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10:25 PM on 11/12/2012
Pause and think for a moment. This is not just a news story for you to play the knowing whimsical cynic. A central institution to our democracy has exhibited serious symptoms of systemic failure. This is not about a few individuals. This is about their management culture. There needs to be a clean-out and a renewal based upon simplification of line management systems.

And all that will be more difficult to gain currency in the public debate as long as the issue is treated a petty crisis arising because of the conduct of a few individuals.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
asrobs
80 years experience
11:28 AM on 11/12/2012
The main problem with the BBC is all the created heads of Departments,- to accomodate all the IN crowd and the old codgers who are sitting comfortable with huge salaries and passing the buck down, there are too many made up jobs for any organisation to carry.It needs a radical reduction in SENIOR STAFF.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Drg40
Representative Democracy is all we have.
08:51 AM on 11/12/2012
I'm not sure I buy into this view entirely. In the last analysis journalistic independence should be subject to management controls. The trick is to set that ceiling so high that few investigative projects ever comes into contact with these issues. IMV in this case two matters crashed through the barrier in quick succession. If Entwhistle hadn't been utterly gormless he would have instituted a system that reported stories of the magnitude of Savile to his office ASAP. To me it's worth remembering that the MacAlpine debacle is an offshoot of the Savile shambles. Hardly describes a management structure light on its feet, does it?
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HUFFPOST BLOGGER
Sian Boyle
11:24 PM on 11/12/2012
I think one of the main issues is the unusual duel role of Editor-in-Chief and Director General i.e. Manager. (The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has in interesting post on it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/11/george-entwistle-bbc-director-general?CMP=twt_gu) Not many media institutions have a top role that simultaneously controls both, and I wonder how feasible the role actually is. While I feel that Entwistle can't personally have seen literally everything that is broadcast, and so needs to be given a break a bit, I do agree with you in that he came across as somewhat 'gormless'- and sometimes appearing to do nothing is just as bad as doing nothing at all.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Drg40
Representative Democracy is all we have.
01:09 AM on 11/13/2012
Thank you for your reply. I agree with much of your point, but if a lady, one of my staff, earning a large part of a quarter of a million came up to me on my way into a social function and implied my Christmas schedule was shot to hell, I would expect to find a detailed explanation on my desk soonest, not of the story that's causing the grief, but the parameters under which I could work out a revised schedule. I have to know something of the breadth of the issue in order to be able to commission new programs as necessary that.fill the schedule, a high profile high cost Xmas schedule, and avoid the mess. Failing that, I would know immediately that there was something rotten, we were playing office politics and start erecting armour plate to protect my derrière and start sorting. In other words, for a man of Entwhistle's supposed experience at the highest levels in the BBC, he should have smelt a rat. Reminiscent of the Cable sting isn't it, and without being unduly conspiratorial who, I wonder, sought to gain from that?