The BBC crisis continues to dominate the airwaves. George Entwistle’s £1.3 million payoff has set outraged tongues wagging. Tim Montgomerie has collected the furious comments made by several Tory MPs. Much of the rest of the press pack has followed suit, saying that the severance deal is yet another self-inflicted wound by BBC management.
Meanwhile, Helen Boaden and Stephen Mitchell, who are respectively the director and deputy director of BBC News, have stepped aside pending the results of the Pollard inquiry. David Dimbleby told the Today programme that he couldn’t understand why George Enwistle resigned, adding that the continuing fallout from the Savile scandal is not the greatest disaster to befall the BBC. He also said that the BBC is governed by a cabal of managers who speak ‘gobbledegook’. This strident intervention has led several interested commentators to wonder if Dimbleby has designs on the director generalship; Andrew Neil goes one further, asking if Dimbleby has his eyes on the chairmanship.
These feverish developments do not suggest that the corporation’s leadership has a grip on the crisis.
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