The last two jobs held by George Entwistle before he became director-general and editor-in-chief of the BBClast month were as its director of vision and controller of knowledge commissioning. Only an organisation where George Orwell once worked could devise such marvellously sinister titles.
The world’s most powerful state broadcaster is one of those places where something that makes perfect sense internally is incomprehensible to an outsider. It conforms to its own logic and follows its own rules. The results are often impressive – think Sherlock, its recent Olympic Games coverage and foreign news – but occasionally baffling.
This is one such occasion. Anyone with a heart, watching the horrifying testimony of one victim of Jimmy Savile, the paedophile who abused his power as a star BBC presenter in the 1970s to round up vulnerable young people in his studio audience, would have felt compelled to take action. The BBC filmed the interview then proceeded to shelve the evidence of its failure.