The BBC wasn't curious enough about Savile

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/28/observer-editorial-incuriosity-at-bbc

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As the mists begin to clear a little, one word links BBC travails ancient and modern. It is a most unexpected word for a great media organisation. Simple but deadly: incuriosity.

At first sight today, though this worst of crises for our world-class broadcasting corporation is not over (nor will it be until the foul legacy of Jimmy Savile is finally fixed), a certain stability seems to be returning. BBC News is able to lead on other stories but its own distress. Meanwhile, Panorama scores a palpable hit in the hell-hole of the Winterbourne View care home, which led to arrests and convictions. But there remains major issues for the BBC – two different areas of concern involving two different inquiries.

One (the Dame Janet Smith remit) ostensibly concerns deeds and omissions from long ago. The BBC was not alone in letting Jimmy Savile roam its corridors. Other institutions, hospitals and prisons among them, have their own tawdry secrets to unravel. Though Savile is beyond justice, others may not be. The police are on that case. When they're done, Dame Janet can begin to lay out her lessons and to ask, among other things, how on earth a mighty broadcasting organisation full of journalists trained to sniff out foul play found nothing to pursue over decades in the activities of a celebrity performer whose first hit show featured young teenage girls left to party with the stars. It was a disaster waiting to happen. So, later on, was another show devoted entirely to kids and their dreams. Were the BBC warned? It would seem that they were. Yet incuriosity and inertia ruled.

Now, because Dame Janet will be turning over old stones, there'll be a temptation to draw a line under her findings. Jimmy Savile is dead and in his grave and, we'll be told, there has been a fundamental shift in society's attitudes towards child sex abuse.

What is much more immediately compelling in headline terms these past few weeks is the show that wasn't broadcast, the light that wasn't shone, the official excuses that withered on the lips. Here's inquiry number two under Nick Pollard, once boss of Sky News. This will be contemporary in its conclusions, affecting people who hold jobs now but may not hold them much longer. Was Peter Rippon at Newsnight pressured by senior bosses? What are we to make of a civil war between journalists on Newsnight and Panorama, or of the disdain with which many BBC producers, editors and reporters regard the men and women in suits who rule their lives? Is BBC Trust governance too close or too far away?

There is, to be frank, a real chattering class dimension to much of this. Readers and viewers outside the media village may all too easily switch off. But that, yet again, will be letting incuriosity win the day.

When George Entwistle, the very new director general, met MPs for an early grilling last Tuesday, the most desultory part of an understandably nervy performance came as he attempted to explain how the corporation's internal reporting system works. You're a Newsnight reporter and you've got a good story. So you get your editor to commission it. If necessary, he'll mention it to the deputy head of news who may consult the head of news who can consult the director general as necessary. And the DG's office could theoretically alert the Trust, sitting over down the road. George Entwistle was head of vision last December, a portentous delusion of a title that meant he had a sort of responsibility for all TV and thus for the two Savile tribute specials. Was he warned that Newsnight was on the paedophile case? Helen Boaden, the head of news, touched on it during a chat over a drink apparently, but Entwistle asked nothing more because he was vision and she was news and probity dictates the two must be kept apart.

Much of the focus has been on the Newsnight programme that never aired but little is known about the background to the two tribute programmes that were broadcast. If there was widespread rumour and/or speculation about Savile inside the BBC, what lengths did the producers of the tribute programmes go to investigate these? Were the senior executives who authorised the tribute programmes not curious about the stories that had surrounded Savile?

Let's take that institutional incuriosity as gospel truth in relation to the Newsnight programme. Let's believe that one good journalist and ex-Newsnight editor (Entwistle ) had no interest in what another good journalist and editor (Rippon) was doing, that he lived in a gossip- and speculation-free environment. You have to ask whether that's any way to run Britain's biggest news operation.

You also have to ask that question again when the director general still ruling the roost in 2011, Mark Thompson, says he only vaguely knew about the Newsnight investigation because a reporter, Caroline Hawley, mentioned it briefly at another pre-Christmas drinks do. The hallowed chain of command develops missing links so fast that the people paid to be responsible only hear the mildest whisper of impending doom over a mince pie and mulled wine.

As Pollard may soon discover, answers come even more difficult than questions here. There's vital independence in the little boxes of journalism where programme editors rule. It means that no politically implanted DG can tell them what to do without an almighty public fuss. It's the space for manoeuvre and decision-making that keeps the BBC free. No wonder, in this structure, nobody quite knows what's going on. But, in an era where every BBC.com posting and every blog is also supposedly the word of the corporation, you have to wonder whether it needs refitting for new purposes.

Even the journalists who work for it seem a bit fogged about what their layers of bosses do all day. Hostility and incomprehension grow up that long chain. Even a trust designed to monitor the corporation vacillates bizarrely between defence and glum predictions that heads may roll when the pressure comes on. There is, lurking behind this lousy business, a challenge that everyone at the BBC, and everyone who cares about good journalism, needs to answer.

Incuriosity let Jimmy Savile shut the green room doors. Incuriosity (and cowardice) still leaves too many victims of sex abuse vulnerable in the wider world. And incuriosity seems built into the way the BBC traditionally runs itself.

George Entwistle should stay. So should Chris Patten, at least until both the Smith and Pollard reports are published. If they survive those, they then need to become properly curious at last — and to sort things out.Comments will be turned on later today