Operation Yewtree

The suggestion from an MP being interviewed on the World at One today is that a lot of the papers are interested in this going away before people start asking why our famous 'campaigning' British Press didn't do a job on Savile years ago. Nobody here is covered in glory; a lot of people obviously knew about it and for their own reasons decided to sit on it.

Originally Posted by Stuart

Think about that. When the BBC allowed Russell Brand to swear at Andrew Sachs, and when Blue Peter was found to have been a little dodgy when awarding prizes, those papers were complaining about the BBC for weeks (in fact, the Russell Brand thing was front page news on the Daily Mail for over a week). Now, there is a chance that staff (or ex staff) at the BBC have been involved in something actually illegal, and we have relatively few stories.

I think it's probably because they are on dodgy ground making accusations at the moment. They don't know who knew and if the BBC had any complaints. As has been mentioned there is probably quite a lot of complicity to go around but, again, we need to make the distinction between rumour and fact. Hearing a rumour doesn't mean you knew it was true. Legally the BBC, 2nd hand accusers, and newspapers would have to be careful labelling someone as a child abuser.

The best they have at the moment is that the BBC story was pulled from Newsnight but the leaked e-mails don't show a cover-up, they show a difference on opinion on if the story was strong enough without an admission from the CPS that they had decided not to act on the allegations because of his age.

More may come out in time. At the moment it's best to reserve judgement until we have some more substantive evidence of a BBC cover-up.

Originally Posted by Damien

I think it's probably because they are on dodgy ground making accusations at the moment. They don't know who knew and if the BBC had any complaints. As has been mentioned there is probably quite a lot of complicity to go around but, again, we need to make the distinction between rumour and fact. Hearing a rumour doesn't mean you knew it was true. Legally the BBC, 2nd hand accusers, and newspapers would have to be careful labelling someone as a child abuser.

The best they have at the moment is that the BBC story was pulled from Newsnight but the leaked e-mails don't show a cover-up, they show a difference on opinion on if the story was strong enough without an admission from the CPS that they had decided not to act on the allegations because of his age.

More may come out in time. At the moment it's best to reserve judgement until we have some more substantive evidence of a BBC cover-up.

Agreed!

I certainly hope that all this speculation about what the BBC did or did not know is not going to detract from the investigation of the abused women

[Hom3r]

10:35 on BBC 1 (instead of HIGMNFY) A Panorma special on JS.

---------- Post added at 23:00 ---------- Previous post was at 21:11 ----------

Watching the JS programme, and annoyed nobody had the balls to report it/him.

[thenry]

They made him then become scared of him and now their going to go down for him. That obviously doesn't apply to all BBC staff.

Best wishes and luck to all the victims.

What a thoroughly depressing state of affairs. It seems the Newsnight editor suffered the same institutional blindness as so many others at the BBC. Apparently a botched police investigation into Saville would have been a story, but the fact that he was a long-term predatory paedophille wasn't. Utterly bizarre.

[nomadking]

I wonder how much of last night's Panorama would have been in the originally planned Newsnight report. Did they have the ex BBC people saying they heard rumours, or saw suspicious behaviour etc, Either way, broadcasting the original report would have brought out all these new witnesses almost a year earlier. It is the ITV programme that has led to the large number of new revelations, which the reporters and researchers could not have uncovered by themselves.

Originally Posted by nomadking

I wonder how much of last night's Panorama would have been in the originally planned Newsnight report. Did they have the ex BBC people saying they heard rumours, or saw suspicious behaviour etc, Either way, broadcasting the original report would have brought out all these new witnesses almost a year earlier. It is the ITV programme that has led to the large number of new revelations, which the reporters and researchers could not have uncovered by themselves.

The original planned Newsnight report had testimony from a number of women Savile abused down the years, some of them apparently on BBC premises, but it did not seemingly have interviews from anyone from the BBC.

One point made in the Panorama documentary last night was that the Newsnight editor was working with a typical BBC mindset that was focused on attacking institutional rather than personal failings. This meant, when the team was unable to dig up evidence of failings on the part of the CPS or the police, the editor went cold on the story. The fact that Savile was a long-term predatory paedophile just didn't strike him as a story. Of course, there was an 'institutional failing' angle there for him - the BBC's abject failure to recognise that one of its employees was using its premises to groom and molest underage girls over many years. Unfortunately, though that angle was there in the original material gathered by his reporters, the Newsnight editor seems to have been blind to the scandal.

[techguyone]

I was waiting to see how long it took but it seems the 'lets sue the bbc/nhs campaign is well underway, only problem with that is.. these organisations are funded by taxation in the main, so we're now... suing ourselves?

doesn't seem right somehow, especially as everyone and their uncle will now jump on the compensation bandwagon, be interesting to see how it ends. Perhaps BBC will end up scrapping the licence fee in the end as an indirect result?
Couldn't they stick to suing on Savile's estate only?

[Itshim]

Bottom line never put your trust in one news source. BBC is no better than any other news media .It reports what it sees as fitting its agenda & ignores those that don`t. Take Andrew Mitchell - Why was the question of police reports being leaked into the public domain not jumped on. Did not suit there agenda ? Time to scrap the BBC perhaps !!! as they answer to no one really - Please do not offer H of C committees ( Three questions and out brigade- if I recall correctly) Moan over.

[nomadking]

News sources can, as in this case, simply not report something. How would you know? If only one news source actually goes ahead, do you dismiss the story? Just because only one news source reports something, doesn't make the story false.

Originally Posted by Chris

One point made in the Panorama documentary last night was that the Newsnight editor was working with a typical BBC mindset that was focused on attacking institutional rather than personal failings.

A mindset that's seems pervasive amongst journalists and editors. After all we've spent the last week or so focusing on the failure of Newsnight to run the story and less on the decades of alleged abuse itself.

[Itshim]

Originally Posted by nomadking

News sources can, as in this case, simply not report something. How would you know? If only one news source actually goes ahead, do you dismiss the story? Just because only one news source reports something, doesn't make the story false.

Multiple news sources are the only way forward. From Private Eye & Spectator to Newsweek. Al Jazeera & Russia today to Fox News & the Huffington Post. Read them all. Then think for yourself.

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by Itshim

Multiple news sources are the only way forward. From Private Eye & Spectator to Newsweek. Al Jazeera & Russia today to Fox News & the Huffington Post. Read them all. Then think for yourself.

Any other news sources are often simply relaying the original story and not independently researching the same issues. How many of your listed sources would actually be researching something themselves?