BBC faces most serious crisis in decades

LONDON - The BBC faces its most serious crisis for decades following a series of high-profile and embarrassing errors that have led to the resignation of its highest ranking journalists and sinking of its reputation.

The seriousness of the crisis which has engulfed the BBC in just over a month was underlined over the weekend, when its chief journalist, the director general George Entwistle resigned.

Entwistle's resignation, which came just eight weeks after he took over the post, was driven by the revelation that journalists on the BBC's flagship daily news program had provided enough innuendo to flesh out false allegations on social media that a leading former politician was a pedophile.

The journalists on the weekday Newsnight program had claimed that a former leading politician had abused a boy in a children's care home in the 1980s.

Social media reports labeled that man as former treasurer of the Conservative Party, Lord McAlpine, a close supporter of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during her term in office.

However, the witness interviewed by Newsnight withdrew his allegations against McAlpine, and he had been confused after police showed him the wrong photo of his abuser.

McAlpine also denied the allegations.

"The BBC allowed lazy and over-enthusiastic journalists to prepare a program which, while not naming anyone pointed the finger at an innocent man as a pedophile," British social and media commentator Damian Thompson, the blogs editor at the Daily Telegraph newspaper, told Xinhua.

"We now know this is based on an entirely mistaken case of identity. But there has been an extraordinary level of incompetence by BBC management, whose chief directive, it seems to me, is to protect their own reputations or to shift the burden of responsibility further down the chain," he added.

The latest error came after a scandal that erupted at the beginning of October, when one of the BBC's longest-serving and well-known presenters was revealed as a pedophile who preyed on children in children's homes, hospitals, and it was alleged on BBC premises around the times of the recording of his hit TV shows.

The pedophile presenter was Sir Jimmy Savile, who died in 2011 aged 84. A leading BBC TV personality for five decades, he used to be a friend of Prince Charles and Margaret Thatcher.

"For the BBC it is an extremely serious crisis, mostly of its own making. First it allowed a pedophile entertainer to use its facilities for many years; it celebrated him, and then shied away from investigating the story of his crimes after his death."

The final straw came when Entwistle flopped badly in an interview with the top BBC radio interviewer for the false report, along with revelations that with Entwistle being awarded a pay-off of 450,000 pounds (about $715 thousand dollars) by BBC chairman Lord Patten, the last colonial governor of Hong Kong.

One scandal after another, "public confidence in the BBC's editorial integrity is now lower than at any time since it was founded," said Thompson.