Jimmy Savile: BBC Preparing to Launch Inquiry

By Dan Sabbagh
The Guardian
October 10, 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/oct/10/jimmy-savile-bbc-investigation

Jimmy Savile: the BBC has been criticised over its response to sex abuse allegations about the presenter.

The BBC is preparing to bring in an outsider to head its independent inquiry into the Jimmy Savile affair, after criticism of its slow response to the unfolding scandal and claims that the Jim'll Fix It star was apparently able to get away with sexual abuse over several decades.

George Entwistle, the BBC director general, announced on Radio 4's Today programme on Monday that the corporation will conduct an inquiry into the Savile allegations.

The inquiry is expected to begin before the end of the year, once the police have given the green light to the BBC that any separate activity by the broadcaster will not compromise the developing Metropolitan police investigation, which, it emerged on Tuesday, is pursuing 120 lines of inquiry involving rape and sexual abuse.

An announcement about the planned review is likely to be made by the BBC on Wednesday, but with few other details. An independent person from outside the corporation will lead the review – although the BBC is less likely to be ready to unveil a name today. Its exact terms of reference are likely to be announced in a few days.

It has taken a week and half since the first cluster of allegations about Savile emerged for the BBC to confirm something approaching an inquiry into its former star's conduct, its context and what lessons the corporation can learn from the torrent of revelations about him and claims about the wider culture at the corporation of the time.

However, Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, which governs the corporation, believes that the broadcaster has responded in appropriate time. At the beginning of last week, when it first emerged that ITV's Exposure documentary about Savile would air, the BBC said that there were no records of complaints in its files about the DJ, presenter and charity worker.

The peer will on Wednesday address journalists at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch – the first time he has publicly faced reporters since the scandal emerged. He is likely to tell reporters that he also understands why Newsnight dropped an investigation into Savile in December of last year, believing it to be an understandable – if in retrospect, incorrect – editorial decision that was in no way prompted by wider corporate pressure.

Although the chairman has no direct influence in individual programmes, it is understood that he is pleased to see that Panorama has begun its own Savile abuse investigation, demonstrating he believes the independence of BBC news.

The producer involved in the Panorama inquiry is Meirion Jones, who was previously involved with the aborted Newsnight report. The 10-minute film was axed by Peter Rippon, Newsnight's editor, because the Crown Prosecution Service declined to confirm that a 2007 police investigation into Savile had been dropped because of his age.

Savile died in October last year aged 84. Shortly after, as the BBC Newsnight investigation was getting up and running, the corporation announced that it would air tribute programmes over Christmas.