Please wait...
Please wait...

Dyke slams BBC Trust chief

A former head of the BBC has criticised the chairman of the UK pubcaster’s governing body, Lord Patten, for lack of leadership during the recent Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal.

Greg Dyke said Lord Pattern, who heads the BBC Trust, had failed to support George Entwistle when he was director-general of the broadcaster in 2012.

Entwistle lasted just 54 days in the role before resigning over the Savile affair, which Lord Patten said had unleashed a “tsunami of filth” on the corporation.

Dyke, who was director-general between 2000 and 2004 and is now chairman of the British Film Institute, said: “I don’t think he [Lord Patten] is doing a good job because I don’t know where he was when the crisis happened.

“The relationship between a chairman and chief executive is all important in any organisation. It is the most important relationship, probably, in the organisation and I thought at the stage at which George Entwistle was clearly in difficulty he needed significantly more support than he got.”

Dyke’s comments were made in front of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, which is looking into the extension of the BBC’s royal charter, which is due for renewal in 2017.

The BBC has been at the centre of several controversies alongside the Savile affair recently, including six-figure pay-offs to former execs and a ditched IT project that cost the organisation over £100m (US$165m).

RELATED ARTICLES

Please wait...