Chris

Peter Rippon, currently "stepped aside" from his Newsnight editorial duties while his role in canning the expose on Jimmy Saville is investigated.

Helen Boaden, similarly "stepped aside" over the Jimmy Saville afair.

Given that he was fully aware that two of the most senior managers with responsibility for Newsnight had been relieved of duty, and that any further controversy centred on Newsnight was bound to attract a great deal of attention over and above the norm, thanks to the Savile affair, it is absolutely baffling that you should be trying to argue that the DG did not have a vital interest here.

As a matter of fact, due to BBC spending cuts the deputy director general post, where Editor-in-Chief duties rested until recently, has been made redundant. EIC *is* now the Director General's responsibility and is a responsibility he should have been far more attentive to given the messed up reporting lines in the Newsnight office.

Bollards. Messham is relating details of traumatic things that happened to him decades ago, when he was a boy. The failure was on the part of reporters to allow for the nature of his evidence, not on Messham himself. Which leads neatly to your final point.

Even in a newsroom, the notion of innocent until proven guilty is an idea that has some currency. If you contact an individual with details of a scandal said to involve them and they systematically deny any involvement, to the point of denying ever having been in the town in question (except once, when he was accompanied at all times), then you think very carefully about running the story at all. At the very least you hold back while you attempt to corroborate the new information the subject of your investigation has just given you.

McAlpine never had to 'disprove' anything. But he would most certainly have been able to dampen the story enough to prevent it running in the near future, if at all.