Two stories about the BBC this week underline how morally bankrupt the Corporation is becoming in its day-to-day operations and attitudes.
Its default position – from new Trustee chairman Rona Fairhead downwards – now appears to be to champion whatever it does, no matter how reprehensible and indefensible.
This underlines yet again that the BBC Trustees – though supposed to guardians of the interests of licence-fee payers – in reality are little more than lackeys of the senior management team.
Story One relates to the continued handling of the Jimmy Savile affair. It became clear last month here in this TCW item that Fairhead had already ‘gone native’ – and her approach to her new role was going to be to defend existing practices and approaches in the BBC rather than to attempt reform.
Peter Oborne reports that Fairhead has now provided further very worrying evidence of this defend-at-all costs mentality. She has categorically refused to open up a further investigation of an alleged cover-up by the most senior management in their handling of the Savile story, and a subsequent alleged failure by Nick Pollard – the man appointed by the Corporation to write an inquiry into their conduct – to report the facts fully.
Why is Rona Fairhead refusing to look again at potential evidence that the Pollard report is a cover-up? http://t.co/dScDBbMscD
— Peter Oborne (@OborneTweets) November 20, 2014
The evidence relating to these issues provided by journalist Miles Goslett in the Oldie magazine is both detailed and compelling. Fairhead’s head-in-sand approach thus appears to herald that as she enters her third month in her new role, she is becoming just as complacent about BBC shortcomings as her predecessors Lord Patten and Michael Lyons.
"I hope Cliff decides to pursue the BBC through the courts. I'm sure that if someone organised a "fighting fund" for such an action the money would pour in"
Story Two relates to the South Yorkshire Police raid on Cliff Richard’s home back in August in connection with alleged sexual abuse back in 1985. Human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson suggested the BBC’s elevation of this to a major new event, complete with helicopter shots, was a gross intrusion of privacy totally out of proportion to the alleged wrong-doing.