En passant

As we await Patten v Marr, just a reflection on how the events of 2 November lost the BBC its Editor-in-Chief.

It seems the Newsnight film on Steve Messham and his mis-directed allegations was almost ready to go; the editorial and legal discussion on the day was apparently aound whether or not to repeat the name Messham had offered as one of his abusers. Remember, the cry of "let them tell their story" was ringing loud post the Savile failure. Clearly, the issue of identification was assumed "banked". So the editorial minders and lawyers can't have asked that basic, and were assessing the risk of legal action, against something which collectively, they must have thought was bound to come out sooner or later. Somewhere during that day, the weasel choice of referring to a "senior Tory" was agreed - and the second major editorial failure followed. Why check with McAlpine when we're not naming him ? The other side of the coin should have been tested - do you think anyone with Tory in their CV enjoys hearing reports of unnamed paedophiles in their party ? Why, wasn't Lord Patten a "senior Tory", once ?

Patten has pre-judged the MacQuarrie report. George was going to have to sack a number of staff, some of whom are old friends, for not formally referring up and making bad calls. He must have decided he couldn't do it, when he himself had been shown to be looking in the wrong direction that day, by John Humphrys.