BBC in crisis after another sex abuse row

The BBC admitted today it faced a "crisis of trust" after being forced to apologise for wrongly implicating a politician in child sex abuse, just weeks after the Jimmy Savile scandal broke. The British public broadcaster suspended all investigations by its flagship current affairs programme Newsnight after it alleged that a senior Conservative party figure repeatedly abused a teenage resident of a children's home in the 1970s.

Although the Newsnight programme did not identify the politician in last week's report, former Conservative treasurer Alistair McAlpine was widely named on social networking sites as the Alleged perpetrator. McAlpine publicly denied the claims yesterday -- and hours later his accuser, Steve Messham, a former resident of the Bryn Estyn children's home in Wales, said McAlpine was not his abuser and had been a victim of mistaken identity.  "We should not have put out a film that was so fundamentally wrong. What happened here is completely unacceptable. In my view the film should not have gone out," BBC Director-General George Entwistle told BBC radio today.

He said he had not been aware of the programme until it had gone out, but said it was signed off by lawyers and senior management. He confirmed he had suspended all Newsnight investigations and had asked for a review into what had happened to be on his desk by tomorrow. Closing Friday's edition of the programme, anchor Eddie Mair summed up the grim mood with the sign-off: "Newsnight will be back on Monday. Probably." Entwistle said it would be "absolutely disproportionate" to consider closing down the 32-year-old programme.

But he admitted the damage the latest row had caused the corporation as it came on the heels of allegations that Savile, one of the BBC’s top presenters before his death last year, sexually abused hundreds of children over a 40-year period. "This is a bad crisis of trust," Entwistle said, while adding: "It would be absolutely wrong to slur by extension the rest of the amazing work that is going on across the rest of BBC News." The BBC has already launched three investigations into the Savile scandal, including one into why Newsnight shelved an investigation into some of the claims against Savile last December.

Source: Times of India

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