- George Entwistle admits he did not watch last weekend’s BBC2 show
- Mr Entwistle knew nothing about it – until a member of staff told him
- He didn’t read yesterday’s papers in which the report finally unraveled
- The BBC chief described the report on child abuse as ‘unacceptable’
- He warns staff involved in the programme could now disciplinary action
- Today, PM David Cameron refused to comment on the BBC’s growing crisis
- Former Minister David Mellor said: ‘He came across as so out of touch’
- Former PCC chairman Sir Christopher Meyer said: ‘Humphrys’ humiliation of Entwistle almost painful to listen to.’
The BBC’s Director General George Entwistle is facing mounting pressure to step down after being humiliated live on air by one of his own presenters today over the Newsnight report that wrongly implicated former Tory treasurer Lord McAlpine in child abuse.
As he embarked on a crushing round of interviews, which included Sky, BBC Breakfast, Radio 5 and Radio Five Live, the BBC boss was laid into by his top attack dog John Humphrys.
In a bruising encounter, the veteran presenter made Mr Entwistle admit he knew nothing about the current affairs programme that broadcasted catastrophic child sex abuse allegations before it went out.
Mr Entwistle was then forced to defend his position as head of the BBC before a series of senior figures called for his head.
Following the interview, David Mellor, the former cabinet minister with responsibility for the BBC, said: ‘I feel so disillussioned that such a man can rise without trace to be Director General.
‘He came across as so out of touch, it made me think Winnie the Pooh would have been more effective.
‘An entire field of management has failed here … Entwistle lacks credibility and he should go as soon as possible, I will be amazed if he is still there at the end of the week.
‘The other particular failure is the judgment of my dear friend Chris Patten [the BBC Trust] for appointing him. He’s got a lot of explaining to do. If Entwistle was the best candidate in the first, the field can not have been better than the selling plate at Fakenham race course.’
Will Wyatt, the former managing director of BBC Television, said there will have to be resignations following the latest Newsnight blunder.
He told the Guardian: ‘This is completely terrible journalism, a terrible blow to the reputation of the programme. The sooner Nick Pollard reports on the Newsnight Jimmy Savile decision the better, they have got to sort it quickly, get to the bottom of who said what, and be swift and tough.
‘I can’t believe everyone on the payroll will be there in two months time. This is not a time for sentimentality.’
Former chairman of the Press Complaints Commission Sir Christopher Meyer said on Twitter: ‘Humphrys’ humiliation of Entwistle almost painful to listen to.’
Mr Entwistle, a former Newsnight editor himself, described the report on the North Wales children’s home scandal as ‘unacceptable’ and warned staff involved in the programme shown last week could now face disciplinary action.
Speaking on Radio 4’s flagship Today programme, he also admitted he did not watch the BBC2 show which led to a former Tory party treasurer being wrongly accused because he was ‘out’.
The BBC chief said he failed to ask key questions about the Newsnight investigation broadcast which contained allegations by abuse victim Steve Messham that a senior Conservative Party figure from the Thatcher era was at the centre of a wide-spread paedophile ring.
The individual was not named, but information in the programme led to false rumours about Lord McAlpine being circulated widely on the internet.
Mr Messham said yesterday he was mistaken after being shown a picture of the peer. Lord McAlpine has also vowed to issue libel proceedings over the ‘wholly false and seriously defamatory’ suggestion.
Asked what would be done to get to the root of what went wrong, Mr Entwistle told Mr Humphrys an investigation into the scandal has been launched and disciplinary action will be taken against members of staff who put the programme together ‘if necessary’.
Pressed further on how it happened, the BBC boss said: ‘We made a film that relied on a witness who yesterday came out and said he made a mistake in identification.
‘That mistake in identification meant that the film that went out was wrong and we apologise for that. We need to be open and clear about finding out what went wrong.
‘It’s an important piece of journalism, and I’ve asked Ken MacQuarrie [the director of BBC Scotland] to get to the bottom of exactly what happened but I want to be careful about pre-judging what he says.
‘But from the enquiries I’ve able to make so far this was a piece of journalism was referred to senior figures in news, it went up to the management board and had appropriate attention from the lawyers. Now the question is, in spite of that, why did it go wrong?
‘Something definitely and clearly and unambiguously went wrong here. But we now have to be clear we have to find out what exactly happened.’
Pressed again by Mr Humphrys about why he didn’t ask those questions before the programmed went out, Mr Entwistle replied: ‘The film was not drawn to my attention before transmission.
‘Not every film and not every piece of journalism made inside the BBC is referred to the director in chief.’
He went on: ‘The key is was it referred sufficiently far up the chain of command and I think in this case the right referrals were made. But I need, I think, it’s important to give Ken MacQuarrie the chance to find out what happened.’
Mr Humphrys responded: ‘But you must have known because a tweet was put out, telling the world beforehand, that something was going to happen on Newsnight, that night, that would reveal extraordinary things about child abuse and that would involve a senior Tory figure from the Thatcher years. You didn’t see that tweet?’
Mr Entwistle said: ‘I didn’t see that tweet, John. I’m afraid this tweet was not brought to my attention.
‘So I found out about this film after it went out. In the light of what happened here I wish this was referred to me.’
He went on: ‘I only found out yesterday when saw him make his apology to Lord McAlpine that there must be doubts about his testimony.’
Asked if he asked questions about the report earlier in the week as Mr Messham’s testimony began to be challenged, Mr Entwistle said: ‘No John, I didn’t.
Mr Humphries said: ‘Do you not think you should have?’
To which Mr Entwistle responded: ‘The number of things going on within the BBC mean that when something is brought to my attention I engage with it.’
At one point he was challenged by Mr Humphrys as to why he failed to take a more active interest in what was happening – even though he was the BBC’s editor-in-chief.
‘So there is no natural curiosity, you wait for somebody to come along to you and say ‘Excuse me director general, but this is happening and you may be interested’?’ Mr Humphrys demanded.
‘You don’t look for yourself, you don’t do what everybody else in the country does, read newspapers, listen to everything that’s going on and say ‘What’s happening here?’’
Mr Entwistle said ‘the second’ he saw it he reacted, but admitted he didn’t read The Guardian yesterday which featured Mr Messham’s admission on its front page because he was ‘giving a speech’.
‘We should not have put out a film that was so fundamentally wrong. What happened here is completely unacceptable,’ Mr Entwistle said.
‘I have taken clear and decisive action to start to find out what happened and put things right.’
However, Mr Entwistle denied the current affairs programme will be dropped in the fall-out of the scandal, saying: ‘It would be absolutely disproportionate to close down Newsnight.’
He also insisted that he had no intention of resigning, although he accepted that his future now lay in the hands of the BBC Trust.
‘I am doing the right things to try and put this stuff straight. I am accountable to the Trust in that endeavour. If they do not feel I am doing the right things, then obviously I will be bound by their judgment,’ he said.
Castigated for what he agreed was a slow response to the Savile disclosures, Entwistle demanded a report on the incident by Sunday and suspended all Newsnight investigations.
Mr Entwistle later appeared on the BBC’s Breakfast programme and said Mr Messham made ‘an inaccurate identification’ but stressed he was not blaming him ‘at all’.
He said: ‘It was our responsibility, Newsnight’s responsibility, to make sure that any misidentification did not end up on television and I am afraid we did not manage to do that, therefore we have to absolutely take the blame.’
Mr Entwistle said after the Newsnight Savile affair broke, he implemented ‘new systems for management and referral which I believed to be robust enough to deal with the challenges of this period’.
He said it was not ‘absolutely right’ that the programme’s content should have been brought to his attention.
He said: ‘It is not extraordinary that the editor in chief of the BBC does not scrutinise in detail every investigation that is going on across the organisation…the BBC simply wouldn’t work if the director general was required to pore in detail over every investigation carrying on.’
He said if this weekend’s probe into what happened suggests disciplinary action, then it will be taken.
Prime Minister David Cameron declined to comment on Newsnight, as he met the Military Wives Choir and a group of Royal Marines at Downing Street to launch this weekend’s remembrance events.
The chairman of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, John Whittingdale, questioned why the report had not been referred to the director general.
He said somebody would have to carry the can for what had happened – although he stopped short of calling for Mr Entwistle to resign.
‘The BBC has apologised but that is just not enough yet. We need to know exactly how this came about. It is hard to imagine a more damaging, appalling allegation than to label somebody as a child abuser,’ he told the Today programme.
‘At the end of the day, the director general of the BBC is editor-in-chief. I would have expected a programme making as serious allegations as these to have gone to him for clearance.
‘This has done immense damage to the reputation of the BBC. That should be of huge concern to the Trust and to the director general.
‘I certainly think somebody needs to take responsibility for this.’
Today’s developments came after Lord McAlpine vowed to issue libel proceedings over the ‘wholly false and seriously defamatory’ suggestion.
The BBC ‘unreservedly’ apologised last night for broadcasting the child sex abuse allegations which led to him being wrongly accused.
The corporation issued its statement after Mr Messham admitted that the man who abused him in the 1970s and 1980s was not Lord McAlpine.
The 70-year-old peer found himself at the centre of a storm of internet speculation after Mr Messham told Newsnight that he had been abused by a senior Conservative from the Thatcher era when he was a teenager at a north Wales children’s home.
In a statement issued last night, the BBC said of its November 2 Newsnight programme: ‘We broadcast Mr Messham’s claim but did not identify the individual concerned.
‘Mr Messham has tonight made a statement that makes clear he wrongly identified his abuser and has apologised.
‘We also apologise unreservedly for having broadcast this report.’
Mr Messham revealed yesterday the first photograph he has seen of the peer was ‘within the last hour,’ a potentially devastating assertion for the corporation because it suggests basic journalistic checked were not carried out before the report was broadcast.
BBC Scotland director Ken MacQuarrie will write an urgent report for Mr Entwistle covering what happened on the programme’s investigation into the north Wales children’s home scandal.
Mr Entwistle said he expected that ‘on Sunday’.
In the meantime there will be an immediate pause in all Newsnight investigations to assess editorial robustness and supervision.
ITV’s This Morning is also in the firing line after host Phillip Schofield ambushed the Prime Minister with a list of so-called ‘Tory paedophiles’ on live TV.
Lord McAlpine blames the two programmes for informing ‘most of the country of something that is a complete lie’.
Mr Messham, a former resident of the Bryn Estyn children’s home in Wrexham, told Newsnight he had been abused by a high-ranking Thatcher-era Tory in the 1970s.
He claimed he was ‘sold’ to men and taken to a hotel where he was molested by the prominent politician and others more than a dozen times.
But Mr Messham’s admission that he was wrong could not have come at a worse time for the Corporation, still reeling from the Jimmy Savile scandal.
There are still questions circling over whether Downing Street had been right to react so swiftly by ordering two inquiries into care home abuse on Tuesday and whether Labour MPs had been too hasty in talking of a potential ‘cover-up’.
Mr Entwistle has already asked audiences to keep faith as the Corporation worked to ‘regain their trust’.
Newsnight admitted it did not have ‘enough evidence’ to name the alleged abuser, yet speculation spread like wildfire on the internet.
Among those stoking the rumours were the Commons Speaker’s wife, Sally Bercow, and Guardian columnist George Monbiot. Mr Monbiot apologised for ‘contributing to the febrile atmosphere’.
In a furious statement issued by Lord McAlpine, he did not specify which organisations would be sued, but his solicitor Andrew Reid later suggested Newsnight, This Morning and even Twitter.
Mr Reid said: ‘We have to look at Newsnight and the way in which they behaved. They took what I think is the coward’s way out.
‘They ran the programme, trailed it, and then told everyone where to go and look for the name. They have done a very, very good job in severely damaging Lord McAlpine’s reputation.
‘They made these statements recklessly, without any thought of the damage that has been done to him. He can cope with political criticism. He is broken-hearted over this.
‘His family are very upset, and he feels that, bearing in mind his health isn’t that good, that this is a total shock at this time in his life.’
Schofield’s stunt on This Morning made matters worse because he inadvertently allowed a camera to see his list of names – which he had found on the internet – as he passed it on a card to the PM.
Mr Messham has left Newsnight in a precarious position by backing Lord McAlpine.
He said: ‘I want to offer my sincere and humble apologies to him and his family.
‘After seeing a picture of the individual concerned, this is not the person I identified by a photograph presented to me by the police in the early 1990s, who told me the man in the photograph was Lord McAlpine.’
Newsnight had commissioned the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for the story.
Its trustees include Sir David Bell, former chairman of the Media Standards Trust, which formed the ‘Hacked Off’ campaign following the phone-hacking scandal.
Sir David is now serving as one of the assessors for the Leveson inquiry into press standards.
Last night MP Rob Wilson wrote to the BBC Trust demanding to know what steps the BBC had taken to verify Mr Messham’s allegations.
It was suggested the BBC had failed even to give the peer a right of reply before the broadcast.
In his statement yesterday, Lord McAlpine said: ‘I did not sexually abuse Mr Messham or any other residents of the children’s home in Wrexham.’
A BBC spokesman said: ‘Newsnight broadcast an investigation into alleged failures in a child abuse inquiry. It worked with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism to give a voice to concerns raised by an abuse victim. It was in the public interest to air these.
‘We did not name any public figure for legal reasons.
‘It is now for the inquiries announced by the Home Secretary to dig deeper into Mr Messham’s concerns.’
Mark Borkowski, one of Britain’s leading public relations experts, said the BBC were ‘the architects of their own crisis’.
‘The BBC … is now culturally inept at dealing with a situation of this size,’ he said.
LORD MCALPINE’S FULL STATEMENT
Tory peer Lord McAlpine (pictured right with Margaret Thatcher) today described reports linking him to the North Wales child abuse allegations as ‘wholly false and seriously defamatory’.
His statement in full: ‘Over the last several days it has become apparent to me that a number of ill- or uninformed commentators have been using blogs and other internet media outlets to accuse me of being the senior Conservative Party figure from the days of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership who is guilty of sexually abusing young residents of a children’s home in Wrexham, North Wales in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
‘It has additionally become apparent to me that a number of broadcasters and newspapers have, without expressly naming me, also been alleging that a senior Conservative Party figure from that time was guilty of or suspected of being guilty of the sexual abuse of residents of this children’s home.
‘It is obvious that there must be a substantial number of people who saw that I had been identified in the internet publications as this guilty man and who subsequently saw or heard the broadcasts or read the newspapers in question and reasonably inferred that the allegation of guilt in those broadcasts and newspapers attached to me.
‘Even though these allegations made of me by implication in the broadcast and print media, and made directly about me on the internet, are wholly false and seriously defamatory I can no longer expect the broadcast and print media to maintain their policy of defaming me only by innuendo.
‘There is a media frenzy and I have to expect that an editor will soon come under pressure to risk naming me. My name and the allegations are for all practical purposes linked and in the public domain and I cannot rewind the clock.
‘I therefore have decided that in order to mitigate, if only to some small extent, the damage to my reputation I must publicly tackle these slurs and set the record straight. In doing so I am by no means giving up my right to sue those who have defamed me in the recent past or who may do so in the future and I expressly reserve my rights to take all such steps as I and my solicitors consider necessary to protect my interests.
‘On Tuesday, 6 November the Home Secretary, the Rt Hon Theresa May MP, made a statement in the House of Commons about the historic allegations of child abuse in the North Wales police force area. She explained that in 1991, North Wales Police conducted an investigation into allegations that, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, children in homes that were managed and supervised by Clwyd County Council were sexually and physically abused. The result of the police investigation was eight prosecutions and seven convictions of former care workers. Despite the investigation and convictions, it was widely believed, she said, that the abuse was in fact on a far greater scale, but a report produced by Clwyd Council’s own inquiry was never published, because so much of its content was considered by lawyers to be defamatory.
‘In 1996, the Rt Hon William Hague MP, the then Secretary of State for Wales, invited Sir Ronald Waterhouse to lead an inquiry into the abuse of children in care in the Gwynedd and Clwyd Council areas. Mrs May told the House of Commons that the Waterhouse inquiry sat for 203 days and heard evidence from more than 650 people. Statements made to the inquiry named more than 80 people as child abusers, many of whom were care workers or teachers. In 2000, the inquiry’s report ‘Lost in Care’ made 72 recommendations for changes to the way in which children in care were protected by councils, social services and the police. Following the report’s publications, 140 compensation claims were settled on behalf of the victims.
‘Mrs May further said that the report found no evidence of a paedophile ring beyond the care system, which was the basis of the rumours that followed the original police investigation and, indeed, one of the allegations made in the past week. Last Friday, a victim of sexual abuse at one of the homes named in the report – Mr Steve Messham – alleged that the inquiry did not look at abuse outside care homes, and he renewed allegations against the police and several individuals. I am, as is now well known to readers of the internet and to journalists working for the print and broadcast media, one of the individuals implicated by Mr Messham.
‘I have every sympathy for Mr Messham and for the many other young people who were sexually abused when they were residents of the children’s home in Wrexham. Any abuse of children is abhorrent but the sexual abuse to which these vulnerable children were subjected in the 1970s and 1980s is particularly abhorrent. They had every right to expect to be protected and cared for by those who were responsible for them and it is abundantly clear that they were horribly violated. I have absolutely no sympathy for the adults who committed these crimes. Those who have been convicted were deservedly punished and those who have not yet been brought to justice should be as soon as possible.
‘The facts are, however, that I have been to Wrexham only once. I visited the local Constituency Conservative Association in my capacity as Deputy Chairman. I was accompanied on this trip, at all times, by Stuart Newman, a Central Office Agent. We visited Mary Bell, a distant relative of mine and close friend of Stuart Newman. We did not stay the night in Wrexham. I have never been to the children’s home in Wrexham, nor have I ever visited any children’s home, reform school or any other institution of a similar nature. I have never stayed in a hotel in or near Wrexham, I did not own a Rolls Royce, have never had a ‘Gold card’ or ‘Harrods card’ and never wear aftershave, all of which have been alleged. I did not sexually abuse Mr Messham or any other residents of the children’s home in Wrexham. Stuart Newman is now dead but my solicitors are endeavouring to locate a senior secretary who worked at Central Office at the time to see if she can remember the precise date I visited that Association.
‘I fully support the decision (announced by the Home Secretary in the House of Commons on Tuesday) of the Chief Constable of North Wales, Mr Mark Polin, to invite Mr Keith Bristow, the Director General of the National Crime Agency, to assess the allegations recently received, to review the historic police investigations and to investigate any fresh allegations reported to the police into the alleged historic abuse in north Wales care homes. Although I live in Italy and have done so for many years and although I am in poor health, I am entirely willing to meet Mr Polin and Mr Bristow in London as soon as can be arranged so that they can eliminate me from their inquiries and so that any unwarranted suspicion can be removed from me.
‘I wish to make it clear that I do not suggest that Mr Messham is malicious in making the allegations of sexual abuse about me. He is referring to a terrible period of his life in the 1970’s or 1980’s and what happened to him will have affected him ever since. If he does think I am the man who abused him all those years ago I can only suggest that he is mistaken and that he has identified the wrong person.
‘I conclude by reminding those who have defamed me or who intend to do so that in making this statement I am by no means giving up my right to seek redress at law and repeat that I expressly reserve my rights to take all such steps as I and my solicitors consider necessary to protect my interests.’
‘We should not have put out a film that was so fundamentally wrong. What happened here is completely unacceptable.’
George Entwistle
‘It was our responsibility, Newsnight’s responsibility, to make sure that any misidentification did not end up on television and I am afraid we did not manage to do that, therefore we have to absolutely take the blame.’
George Entwistle
‘This has done immense damage to the reputation of the BBC. That should be of huge concern to the Trust and to the director general. I certainly think somebody needs to take responsibility for this.’
John Whittingdale MP
Daily Mail