The Spectator’s Notes | 25 October 2012

Instead of looking at the BBC’s behaviour over the Jimmy Savile programme through the red mist of self-righteous hindsight, consider the editorial problem it presented at the time. You have already planned Christmas tribute programmes to one of your most popular contributors of the past 40 years (God knows why he was so popular, but that is the symptom of a wider cultural sickness). Then you hear that part of your empire is investigating child abuse allegations against him. You inquire, and find that, though highly alarming, the allegations do not constitute proof and are not clearly supported by other inquiries e.g. by the police. Obviously you cannot run both the tribute programmes and the child abuse programme. Which do you spike? Surely almost any editor would run the tributes and at least postpone the exposé. He couldn’t can both because everyone would then ask why. Without clear, considered proof (which, even today, does not seem to reach court standard), it would have been crazy for the BBC to assassinate the character of its own hero.