Up to six senior executives are expected to follow Mr Entwistle out of the door once the findings of a series of internal reviews are published, throwing the leadership of the BBC even further into chaos. One MP suggested that only a "clear out" of the Trust and senior management would restore the faith in the corporation, while Philip Hammond, the Cabinet minister, suggested there would be "questions" over the future of the licence fee if the BBC failed to regain the public's backing.
As the hunt for a new director-general began, David Dimbleby, the Question Time host, told The Daily Telegraph that the Trust must appoint an outsider who was not "pickled in the culture" of bureaucracy that had "throttled" the BBC in recent years.
Lord Patten insisted yesterday that he would not be resigning, but admitted his job would be on the line if he could not restore people's "huge trust" in the BBC.
He said: "I think there are big issues which need to be tackled involving the BBC and .?.?. that's what I want to give my attention to."
But Mr Davies suggested that Mr Patten's position had become "untenable". He said: "He has been asleep at the wheel while he has been doing the job, he spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of licence-fee money appointing George Entwistle and 54 days later he is gone.
"The fact that he has approved a £450,000 payoff for him means his position has become farcical.
"This pay-off is totally unjustifiable, it's unacceptable, it's extraordinary and I suspect it's been done to save Lord Patten's bacon."
Gerry Sutcliffe MP, another member of the culture, media and sport committee, said the package was "symptomatic of the problems around the BBC", adding: "He has not had time to make an impact and to get that amount of money is ridiculous."
He suggested Mr Entwistle should "think twice" before accepting the money because it would "tarnish the spirit of his resignation".
Downing Street said that Lord Patten retained the support of the Prime
Minister, but that position is likely to change if he is criticised by any of the three BBC internal inquiries due to report back in December on Savile and sexual harassment.
In the week that BBC News celebrates its 90th birthday, Lord Patten said that the future of Newsnight was "one of the things we will be discussing" with the acting director-general, Tim Davie.
The Daily Telegraph has learnt that the Newsnight programme of Nov 2, in which a former care home resident wrongly claimed to have been abused by a senior Tory, was approved for transmission by one of the more junior members of the BBC's 12-man management board.
Although the BBC refused to say who had given the go-ahead for the film, the Telegraph has established that it was one of four executives: Lucy Adams, director of human resources, Zarin Patel, chief financial officer, Peter Johnston, director of BBC Northern Ireland, or Rhodri Talfan Davies, director of BBC Wales.
Mr Whittingdale said the executive who approved the Newsnight show would have to quit. "If George Entwistle was unaware of the programme, which he says he was, then clearly somebody below him took the decision that it was right to broadcast it," he said. "So potentially it may require other people to resign."
Government sources said up to five other BBC executives might also have to resign when the findings of the BBC's internal inquiries were made public.
Helen Boaden, the head of news, her deputy Steve Mitchell, Peter Rippon, the editor of Newsnight, and David Jordan, the head of editorial policy and standards, have already been tainted by last month's Savile revelations, while Adrian van Klaveren, who approved last week's Newsnight film as acting head of news, is in the dock over the latest fiasco.
The early front-runners for director-general include Caroline Thomson, the BBC's former chief operating officer, and Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom.
Writing in today's Daily Telegraph, John Simpson, the BBC's world affairs editor, calls for the creation of a new post of director-general in charge of journalism.
"What must not be allowed to happen is that a radical overhaul will produce more managers," he says. "Over-management has been a serious blight on the BBC since the 1980s."
No comments:
Post a Comment