as planned.
In fact it probably couldn’t have gone worse for them. Revenge, for that’s what the Newsnight investigation
they actually showed was.
After the investigation they didn’t broadcast about Jimmy Savile’s abuse of vulnerable young girls and boys on their premises and their dime for the 30 years he was at the corporation, when they were shown up by ITV’s Exposure, there was an immediate fight back.
The first thing you heard out of the mouths of many of the corporation’s apologists – most on the payroll – was Thatcher. Ah yes the wicked witch of the west. Guaranteed to deflect attention. Mention how Savile was at Chequers with the Thatchers, they’re still at it. Of course Thatcher didn’t get the keys to the PM’s official residence until 1979, some 15 years after the BBC employed Savile. 15 years in which he went about his open secret
with ease and no hindrance.
But if the can get the focus shifted, it’s a winner. Just it didn’t quite pan out as they liked, wasn’t deflecting enough. But then a new saviour. Tom Watson – fat sweaty, spotty, pig who doesn’t seem to be suffering from not getting that £400 a month food allowance, no questions asked, from MP expenses anymore.
A paedophile ring linked to number 10.
Of course he wouldn’t mean Labour governments, so the BBC were on it like a flash. And so days later we get editor of the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Iain Overton tweeting that If all goes well we’ve got a Newsnight out tonight about a very senior political figure who is a paedophile
– unsurprisingly a Tweet that seems to have been deleted since November 2nd.
Only problem was Watson’s allegations were to do with Peter Righton. Which has more links with Labour. As a paedophile ring that had infiltrated all 12 of the children’s homes run by Islington council — then under the leadership of Margaret Hodge. Hodge who would later become Minister for Children under Tony Blair.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. It does sound like a mail order correspondence course you get in the back of a comic doesn’t it. Send 3 box tops from Frosties and a postal order for £3.50 and get a free pair of x-ray specs with your membership.
It is an organisation that was set up by people who were Labour donors.
Anyway Iain Overton didn’t get what he wished for, and has subsequently paid the price at the BIJ, as the Newsnight broadcast didn’t name names. It just mentioned phrases along the likes of a prominent Thatcher-era Tory figure
, a grandee, time and time again. The BBC and their apologists see their main enemies, Tory MPs and the Tory press, trying to hold them account for Savile’s activities. Well this’ll get ’em back for daring such things.
They didn’t need to name this grandee in the broadcast, they pretty much know that most people would do some Phillip Schofield investigative journalism and hit teh interweb. Google the name of the children’s home in Wales and up pops a list of sites with a list of names. Including at least one prominent Tory grandee
.
Only problem being if the BBC and the BIJ had conducted a proper investigation you’d think they’d show the victim interviewed, Steve Messham, a picture of this individual, doesn’t seem like rocket surgery or brain science. But of course as he stated last week..
After seeing a picture in the past hour of the individual concerned, this [is] not the person I identified by photograph presented to me by the police in the early 1990s, who told me the man in the photograph was Lord McAlpine Steve Messham
You might think they would also check other things. How he got to the name Lord McAlpine? Because how many out of Westminster at that time do you think would know this bloke or his name, Tory grandee he may have been but how high profile in the real world was he really? He says the police told him the name when showing him a picture of the actual person that abused him. They might have also checked other things stated such as the whether he named McAlpine in the Waterhoue Inquiry. He said he was prevented, transcripts apparently show otherwise. Though in them he states he believes the person is now dead. Which might have raised some questions in a proper journalistic investigation.
No I’m not trying to blacken Steve Messham’s name as a number have shamefully tried to do over the weekend. This poor man was put into care because he was abused, where he should have been safe but wasn’t. Amongst it all he and the others in the homes who suffered the same fate are the victims. People who accused McAlpine have a case to answer – Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *innocent face*
Sally Bercow, I looked up Lord #McAlpine on t’internet. It says the strangest things
– George Monbiot – but his suffering pales into insignificance compared.
And there’s still a story that needs to be told about the abuse suffered by many in care at the hands of powerful people, that was covered up by powerful people – the police have a lot of questions to answer. Would there have been a broadcast from the BBC because it’s not their main aim to tell the victim’s stories and see justice done but just a smear campaign against those trying to hold the BBC to account for their failures with regards Jimmy Savile’s years of abuse.
And that is the new BBC line of deflection – just have to check the Twitter time lines of the apologists.
We apparently shouldn’t be focusing on the the BBC eating itself. Shouldn’t be gunning after people who weren’t up to their jobs – anyone else surprised George Entwistle knew where the sword was to fall on and that he didn’t miss when trying?
The BBC is reaping what it sewed. Brought low by it’s own hubris. It’s own bias. Now they are pushing the victims forward.
But the BBC ignored the victims during Jimmy Savile’s 30 year career at the corporation.
The BBC treated the victims with contempt when they dropped the Newsnight story about Savile’s abuses while keeping the three tribute TV shows and one radio show in their schedule.
The BBC weren’t too bothered about the victims when they used one of them for a revenge smear campaign in the Newsnight edition that was broadcast.
The BBC are now only interested in the victims because it deflects from the the BBC. Shamefully using them once again.