Updates: Jimmy Savile Newsnight review

LATEST: More staff shake-up in the fall out of the controversy. Stephen Mitchell has resigned as BBC News deputy director. Adrian Van Kaveren, BBC Radio5Live controller, and Peter Rippon, former Newsnight editor, to move to new jobs.

13:00pm: Fascinating insight into the workings of the BBC, in the Pollard report summary. “Efforts were hampered in part by an apparent adherence to rigid management chains and a reluctance to bypass them. But, at the same time, large groups of people spread across different departments were sharing partial knowledge, suggesting courses of action and proposing amendments to statements or to the BBC’s official position. Great efforts were made by individuals but there was a critical lack of leadership and of co-ordination.

“The fallout from Newsnight’s Savile investigation generated a great deal of disagreement and, in some instances, personal animosity within the BBC. It is a complex story and it has not been easy to unravel the details. We have examined more than ten thousand e-mails and other documents and received many lengthy personal statements but much of the story, inevitably, depends on personal recollections. We have conducted detailed interviews with nineteen individuals involved, some of the them more than once. Accounts of the same incidents (even in recent months) often vary considerably. Some interviewees had strong recollections of relevant events; others did not.”

12:55pm: Pollard review also said: “Report shows that the level of chaos and confusion was even greater than was apparent at the time. The efforts to get to the truth behind the Savile story proved beyond the combined efforts of the senior management, legal department, corporate communications team and anyone else for well over a month. Leadership and organisation seemed to be in short supply. In particular, crucial information about the basic facts of the case was not shared. Even when concerted efforts were made to understand it, no-one seemed to grasp what should be done with the information.”

12:50pm: “Newsnight’s abortive Jimmy Savile inquiry of 2011 started a chain of events that was to prove disastrous for the BBC. It led to one of the worst management crises in the BBC’s history and contributed to further chaos that led to the resignation of the Director General a few weeks later over the McAlpine affair,” Pollard review says.

12:46pm: Acting Director General of the BBC Tim Davie says that the Pollard Review has cost almost £2 million.

12:43pm: Pollard review said the BBC’s management system “proved completely incapable of dealing” with the issues raised by the axing of the story and “the level of chaos and confusion was even greater than was apparent at the time”.

The report found: “The decision to drop the original investigation was flawed and the way it was taken was wrong but I believe it was done in good faith. It was not done to protect the Savile tribute programmes or for any improper reason.”

The report was published at the same time as another review, by the BBC Trust, concluded that airing a Newsnight report that led to Lord McAlpine being wrongly named as a paedophile had resulted largely from a failure by members of the team to follow the BBC’s own editorial guidelines.

12:35pm: BBC reminds all those there that the victims of Jimmy Savile’s abuse are “at the heart” of all this.

12:32pm: According to Mr Pollard, the newsnight investigators got the story right in the first place. But the decision to shelve the investigation was flawed, but done in good faith.

It was not done because of the BBC’s plans to show special programmes to celebrate Savile’s life.

The BBC admits that the report makes uncomfortable reading.

12:26pm: BBC management has been criticised by a report into the decision by Newsnight not to screen an investigation into sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile.

The review by Nick Pollard of Sky News did not, however, find evidence to suggest that the programme had been shelved as a cover-up.

Mr Pollard concluded that programme was not pulled to protect the tribute shows to the late Jim’ll Fix It presenter that were shown at Christmas time shortly after his death.

In full: The Pollard review >>

BACKGROUND

The BBC has repeatedly denied claims it axed the show because it clashed with planned tributes to the late DJ who died in 2011.

Figures including director of news Helen Boaden, Newsnight editor Peter Rippon and former director-general Mark Thompson are reported to have been questioned as part of the review which is carried out by ex-Sky News executive Nick Pollard.

Mr Rippon stepped aside from his role after the BBC said his explanation as to why the show dropped its investigation into the late DJ and TV presenter was “inaccurate or incomplete in some respects” and corrected his statement.

The publication of the review - accompanied by a separate report by Ken MacQuarrie into how Newsnight reported an incorrect story implicating Lord McAlpine in child abuse allegations - caps a bad end to a year that started so well for the BBC.

The corporation managed to shake off criticism for how it covered the Diamond Jubilee and was widely praised for its coverage of the Olympics and Paralympics, but has ended the year paying out £185,000 in damages to Lord McAlpine and losing not one, but two Director Generals.

George Entwistle, who was head of BBC television at the time the investigation was dropped, took the top job in September only to resign after just over 50 days in charge as the Savile scandal washed over the corporation.

Another review led by Dame Janet Smith, looking at the culture and practices of the BBC during the years in which Savile worked there, is expected next year.