Lord Patten, BBC Trust sources have been suggesting, may try to appoint a new director general by the uncomplicated expedient of ringing up and begging. It has worked in times past: Michael Grade persuaded Mark Thompson to apply for the job when the then Channel 4 boss had ruled himself out. But private genuflection is hardly appropriate for a job at the BBC, which we feel we own because we're all obliged to pay for it. The "no taxation without representation" principle, usefully established in another context, points to a different approach.
That is not to say it is time to vote for a director general, particularly after a week when only seven people and a lost dog could be bothered to vote for a police commissioner. It is a professional job at an impartial broadcaster: the necessary politicisation of electioneering would rather defeat the purpose. But the trust, composed of 12 mostly undistinguished individuals, must acknowledge how wrong it was in selecting George Entwistle, an untried man who had risen without leaving much trace at the BBC.
It would be wrong, though, if the trust thought it had been laid low by a freak wave of events. As the media climate is warmed by boiling social media, such freaks are becoming regular occurrences: the Ross/Brand storm that swept away the respected boss of Radio 2; the phone-hacking scandal that forced a change of management at News International and more. And of course there was the Savile child abuse scandal, and its extraordinary chain of consequence and error that led to Entwistle's on-air resignation.
In picking Entwistle, in the secretive process supposedly required of public appointments, the trust substituted its judgment for the media mob. It was the wrong approach: it should have had the sense to publish its shortlist of candidates; allowed them, in a modest way, to air some of their ideas. Whose broadcaster is it, after all? If one candidate wanted to drop a channel, say, the public ought to have known.
Patten should also have allowed contenders to be interviewed in the media after shortlisting: which might have uncovered Entwistle's inability to contend with John Humphrys. The most important part of being DG is not, as Patten thinks, to be a former programme maker, but rather to be able to lead the BBC against political and media attack – an assault which in normal times is continuous, but for a rare 18-month period was diverted because the focus was on phone hacking and the Leveson inquiry.
Secretive systems and introverted decision-making are more likely to produce worse outcomes, in the media or anywhere else. In many newspapers, the checks and balances on owners and executives are weak – readers identify with their papers so strongly that, for instance, even Friday's publication of 12 pages of yellow journalism about obscure do-gooders who use unisex loos will not be enough to dent the Mail's sales. But if tabloid editors feel invulnerable, answerable in this case only to a single viscount, it is no wonder that these things happen. Nobody, after all, lost their job at Northern & Shell after it paid out hundreds of thousands to the McCanns.
The BBC, in contrast, has to be responsive. It is not unknown for newspapers to incorrectly label somebody as a paedophile; but for the BBC to do so was always going to require resignations. Now, Lord Patten, having got the director general's appointment wrong once before, may already feel it is right to step aside if he can find a solid DG this time.
But can he even do that? If Patten conducts the process in secret, with a couple of phone calls and behind-closed-doors interviews, he runs the risk of making a similar error. Running the BBC is a public office and candidates should compete for it openly.
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