BBC & Savile

[princerupe74]

Why does it matter so much that Newsnight's Savile investigation was dropped? The guy was dead by then, so it's not as if more young girls were thereby endangered. Strikes me as a typical media witch hunt - with the BBC Director General the target on this occasion - which won't end until the head rolls....

[jno]

I agree, but there's no smoking gun yet. They do say living people are being investigated too, so something may come of that.

My own feeling is that even if some BBC studio director did know what was going on, even encouraged it, it wouldn't make the BBC 'responsible' any more than M&S would be responsible if a staff member groped women in the changing rooms.

[ummmm]

One of the girls from Duncroft claimed on 'The Other Side To Jimmy Savile' that she reported him to the staff. She was told to stop lying.

The reason it matters is they were going to go ahead with it but chose to do tributes to him instead, knowing both couldn't be shown. How would that have sat with the public at the time?

[Duncer]

So what if a well known cabale of BBC presenters, producveers and DJs were inplicit in what almost pertained to be a "ring" of abuse? Would you accept that?

[jno]

Duncer - do you mean would I accept that as evidence of BBC partial responsibility for Savile's crimes? Yes, I think so. But - assuming that's a typo for complicit - they'd have to have known.

[youngmafbog]

They need closure. Yes millions of punds of tax payers money in compo by the looks of it.

[ummmm]

Bull!!

[LazyGun]

It matters because we as a society, a culture, need to learn lessons from such scandals.

Watching the Panorama show last night, the one thing in particular that became very clear was the sheer number of people who either knew, or suspected they knew about SoViles proclivities - and yet they chose not to report their suspicions, fearing they would be ridiculed, or would lose their jobs. So, a toxic combination of fear, complacency or even a kind of unthinking complicity meant that none of these suspicions were voiced - And whilst individual reports or complaints may have been dismissed, many would have prompted cause for investigation maybe.

It was also striking, on a more cultural note, that celebrity, fame, perceived glamour all served to blind and deflect criticism and suspicion.

And all of this is before we get into what might be the apparent complicity of an institution like the BBC.

And before we get too hyper -critical of the BBC - lets remind ourselves that the documentary that aired last night was one part of the BBC doing a no holds barred demolition job on another.

[ummmm]

It's also a sad fact that 'brushing things under the carpet' and 'turning a blind eye' were a sign of the times back then.

[ichkeria]

"a dispute on a non existent spelling mistake"

"non-existent" has a hyphen, if you don't mind :-)

I think the big thing about the Newsnight thing is that the BBC was also planning its Xmas tributes at the same time, and the suspicion is that the people doing that didn't want their work undermined by a scandal connected by the person they were doing the tribute to.
There's no doubt that the usual suspects are out to "get" the BBC over this tho'. I've seen nothing that suggests the BBC were deliberately covering up Savile's activities over the years. In fact - as last night's programme by the - er - BBC mentioned, his bosses got him in at one point and challenged him over the issue but he simply denied it. And it looks as though the majority of his BBC victims were too ashamed, or startstruck, to say anything at the time.

[jno]

people don't run to the police whenever they have suspicions or hear rumours. On the whole, I think that's a sensible situation. If you told your boss you'd heard that a fellow worker was a paedophile, but had no evidence at all, would you expect him to do something about it?

The drawback is that he might do so if he had a lot of such reports - but he didn't have any, because individuals decided individually they didn't have any evidence.