Jimmy Savile - Sexual Predator

Director general George Entwistle has defended the BBC's response to the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal, but accepted it raised questions of trust.

He told the Commons culture committee that since the "very, very grave" claims had emerged, "we have done much of what we should have done".

A past "cultural problem" at the BBC had allowed abuse by the presenter.

He also said the BBC was investigating five to 10 "serious allegations" involving past and present employees.

"There is no question that what Jimmy Savile did and the way the BBC behaved in the years - the culture and practices of the BBC seems to allow Jimmy Savile to do what he did - will raise questions of trust for us and reputation for us," he told the Commons culture, media and sport select committee.

"This is a gravely serious matter and one cannot look back at it with anything other than horror, frankly, that... his activities went on as long as they did undetected."
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(Source).

This is like the Lance Armstrong doping scandal of the media world. The Beeb's reputation is in tatters. They facilitated a culture of sexual abuse and quietly covered it up for decades. Your TV licence at work! :rolleyes:
 
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xibinim said:
No, what's the word?
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Well to be honest not much new. Entwistle sounded a bit like a blundering idiot, stammering all his words but he did receive a pretty hard grilling by the MPs, at one point they were even laughing at the questioning of him. He was clearly being thrown to the lions and I think he is damned if he does, damed if he doesn't in all this.

He didn't help himself much however. He claimed there was "no managerial pressure" put on Rippon over pulling Newsnight, then he backtracked later and stated there was "no innappropriate managerial pressure" put on Rippon, suggesting that there was infact some pressure.

He also seemed rather unable to answer many of the questions presented by the board.
Questions such as "how many allegations of sexual harrassment have their been in the BBC this year?" and "how many individuals are being investigated in the BBC relating to the Saville case", his answer: "err, don't know, err, 8-10, 5-10,errr".

On a positive note he pointed out that the BBC is a corporation that will actively investigate itself, in the public realm, and hold to account it's members. He stated no other company would do what it is doing now, such as the Panorama show. Where the heads of sheds allow the Editors of shows free reign to investigate how they wish in the vein of true journalism and the public interest.

The simplistic view is that this whole ordeal is just damaging to the BBC. I would argue that in fact the BBC can benefit in some sense in the way it deals with this. This can be achieved in a way many other companies could not if faced with this situation. Where it trips up could be with the bosses stammering over the whole affair.
 
Evangelion said:
(Source).

This is like the Lance Armstrong doping scandal of the media world. The Beeb's reputation is in tatters. They facilitated a culture of sexual abuse and quietly covered it up for decades. Your TV licence at work! :rolleyes:
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As I just posted right after you, I only think the BBC rep is in tatters by average joe's viewpoint. It's the bosses that should be held accountable, to hold their hands up at the inability to stop a scandalous coverup.
 
Maybe I'm being thick here but ok, the BBCs reputation is in tatters, however, I still have to pay my license fee so how exactly will that make a difference to them?
 
The whole thing is one massive cover up, it has all the hallmarks of people brushing stuff under the carpet hoping it will go away, probably for fear of what it will uncover and who will be implicated. I do however think the bandwagon is a dangerous thing, not least when many of the people on it are unstable or have a history of mental illness, but I am absolutely confident Saville was the wort type of predatory pedophile.

I remember having a discussion with a colleague back in 2002, it was the first time I heard the rumours about Saville and his source was a family member in the Met. I remember him saying "it is well known in the Met" and since then I have heard various other people say the same thing over the years, often with a smirk as if it was well known but nothing was going to be done about it.

All this tells me that the connections and associations run deep and high into the establishment and I suspect the next 12 months will finally see this come out. The fact the press, police and government never felt able or worse, willing to confront it is worrying and does point to high connections and a "you can't handle the truth" situation.
 
Housey said:
I do however think the bandwagon is a dangerous thing, not least when many of the people on it are unstable or have a history of mental illness, but I am absolutely confident Saville was the wort type of predatory pedophile.
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If you're "absolutely confident" he's a pedophile, why didn't you report him years ago? Or are you just jumping on the bandwagon?
 
Captain Planet said:
As I just posted right after you, I only think the BBC rep is in tatters by average joe's viewpoint. It's the bosses that should be held accountable, to hold their hands up at the inability to stop a scandalous coverup.
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The BBC's rep is surely in tatters by anyone's standards. Yes it's the bosses that should be held accountable, but they weren't the only ones facilitating and covering up the abuse.

There's no easy way out of this for the BBC, and their reputation can't be recovered by the simple expedient of scapegoating a few figureheads.

Sweetloaf said:
Maybe I'm being thick here but ok, the BBCs reputation is in tatters, however, I still have to pay my license fee so how exactly will that make a difference to them?
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It won't, that's the beauty of it. The BBC gets to take your money no matter how poor its reputation is.
 
Housey said:
The whole thing is one massive cover up, it has all the hallmarks of people brushing stuff under the carpet hoping it will go away, probably for fear of what it will uncover and who will be implicated. I do however think the bandwagon is a dangerous thing, not least when many of the people on it are unstable or have a history of mental illness, but I am absolutely confident Saville was the wort type of predatory pedophile.

I remember having a discussion with a colleague back in 2002, it was the first time I heard the rumours about Saville and his source was a family member in the Met. I remember him saying "it is well known in the Met" and since then I have heard various other people say the same thing over the years, often with a smirk as if it was well known but nothing was going to be done about it.

All this tells me that the connections and associations run deep and high into the establishment and I suspect the next 12 months will finally see this come out. The fact the press, police and government never felt able or worse, willing to confront it is worrying and does point to high connections and a "you can't handle the truth" situation.
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You make it sound like these high connections and people in positions of power are all in on a seedy paedophile ring. To me it's more like these people just don't want to touch the issue with a barge pole for fear of ruining their own careers and reps. This is equally sad if this is the case.
 
Captain Planet said:
On a positive note he pointed out that the BBC is a corporation that will actively investigate itself, in the public realm, and hold to account it's members.
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So we're expected to believe that the broadcaster which turned a blind eye to decades of sexual abuse is 'a corporation that will actively investigate itself, in the public realm, and hold to account it's members'? Er... since when, exactly? Has the entire corporation been miraculously cleansed over the past 7 days?

He stated no other company would do what it is doing now, such as the Panorama show.
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What a load of ********. The BBC tried to kill this story! The only reason it's being released now is because the truth is out and management is scrambling to implement some kind of damage control.
 
Evangelion said:
The BBC's rep is surely in tatters by anyone's standards. Yes it's the bosses that should be held accountable, but they weren't the only ones facilitating and covering up the abuse.

There's no easy way out of this for the BBC, and their reputation can't be recovered by the simple expedient of scapegoating a few figureheads.
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The bosses are accountable, they are paid extortionate salaries for that very reason, they must shoulder the responsibility. They are responsible to ensure the systems are in place to prevent this ever happening, such as CRB checking and the way they handle programmes with children in them. None of these systems were in place in the 60's and 70's, I'm sure they only came in the 90's when people were made more aware. In the 60's I don't think anyone would have even known what to do if a girl had made an allegation of abuse!

It's easy for your average tabloid ingestor to make the connection of "BBC + SAVILLE = BBC BAD!", that is why it's reputation is at stake. The grim fact is, there are companies the world over who employ paedophiles, obviously. The BBC in it's goal to be open and pursue true investigative journalism, in the light of the public interest, in doing so it makes itself easy for you or I to make that easy conclusion... BBC BAD.
 
Captain Planet said:
You make it sound like these high connections and people in positions of power are all in on a seedy paedophile ring. To me it's more like these people just don't want to touch the issue with a barge pole for fear of ruining their own careers and reps. This is equally sad if this is the case.
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I suspect this to be the case.
 
The guy on Newsnight said that literally the Monday after Saville had died he went straight to the higher ups to get permission to investigate Saville, why so soon after he had died? it's like he was waiting for him to die to run the investigation as though he wasn't allowed to whilst he was alive.

Certainly to me it seems like the BBC protected Saville, along with hints Saville made that he would take others in the BBC down with him I don't think an organized paedophile ring within the BBC is out of the question, for all the damage this has done to the BBC Saville can no longer implicate others which may be a result on their part.
 
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I should imagine there are a few people resting less easy in their beds at night worrying about what this police investigation might uncover. This story seems to have an unstoppbale momentum to rival that of the phone hacking scandal.
 
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