The BBC’s governing body, the BBC Trust, held an emergency meeting on Sunday evening as the broadcaster reeled from the humiliating Saturday night resignation of the director general, George Entwistle, after just 53 days in the top job in British television.
The BBC chairman, Lord Patten, said privately that he expected to speak again to the director general candidates Caroline Thomson, the BBC’s former chief operating officer, Ed Richards, Ofcom’s chief executive and “one or two other names” in a bid to rapidly recruit a new leader for the crisis-hit broadcaster.
Patten — also under fire for choosing the underperforming Entwistle — told the Andrew Marr Show on television channel BBC1 that the BBC Trust would have to appoint a successor “with a few weeks rather than a lot of months.” Interviewing previously shortlisted candidates and a few chosen others could help him achieve that.
Photo: Reuters
It emerged last night that Entwistle is to receive a £450,000 (US$714,000) payoff — equivalent to a year’s salary — even though he stepped down having concluded that the BBC “should appoint a new leader” after he struggled to contend with the fallout from the Jimmy Savile child abuse crisis.
Amid repeated comparisons to the Hutton crisis that led to the departure of the BBC’s then director general, Greg Dyke, and its chairman, Gavyn Davies, in 2004, the office of British Prime Minister David Cameron remained determined to keep its distance — thereby avoiding accusations it was capitalizing on the BBC’s weakness for political benefit.
With Cameron being kept informed by his director of communications, the former BBC editor David Oliver, Downing Street was indicating it wanted Patten to be given time to assert his grip on the broadcaster. The opposition Labour party leader, Ed Miliband, tweeting, said that the BBC needed to put in place “a strong [director general]” and that it was necessary “to restore trust in one of our great national institutions.”
Entwistle’s departure also did little to steady nerves inside a rumor-hit BBC, with journalists working on the Newsnight flagship current affairs program still unclear if it were to be aired as usual last night, pending an emergency review of the circumstances surrounding a report that wrongly linked the former Conservative party treasurer Lord McAlpine to child sexual abuse.
The acting director general, Tim Davie, was expected to set out his plans yesterday for dealing with the crisis created by the Newsnight broadcast.
Insiders said there were some internal doubts over the Newsnight film, which although it did not name McAlpine, referred to historic allegations connected with a north Wales child abuse scandal in such a way that it was possible to easily identify him via the Internet.
It is understood that Newsnight’s political editor, Allegra Stratton, had such grave concerns over the allegations made by abuse victim Steve Messham and the possible Twitter implications for those involved that she refused to conduct a two-way interview for the program. However, Stratton would not confirm this on Sunday night.
There was also talk of fierce battles at the top of the BBC, as Davie attempted to ease the crisis — and speculation that other BBC executives had come under pressure to step aside from their roles while various inquiries into Newsnight continue.
Patten indicated that he was keen on a wider structural overhaul of the corporation, offering vague proposals to appoint a strong “editorial figure” to complement the work of the director general. The chairman said “there is a case” for splitting the roles of director general and editor-in-chief, although this would require an emergency rewrite of the BBC’s governing royal charter.
An emergency review into the erroneous McAlpine report led by Ken MacQuarrie, the head of BBC Scotland, was sent to Davie on Sunday — while a second review, the Nick Pollard review of last year’s decision to axe an investigation into sexual abuse by Savile, is due to begin holding interviews with those at the heart of that affair this week.
The BBC Trust also met Davie to hear the outcome of the MacQuarrie review, with the body saying that it was “looking forward to him setting out … his plans” for dealing with “some of [the] issues” arising from the McAlpine broadcast.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese