A BBC lifer and its director-general from 2004 until earlier this year, Thompson was named CEO of the foundering New York Times Company effective next month. The Gray Lady herself has now reported: Thompson had discussions with BBC management about the story on Savile that never was, before it wasn’t. The one he denied knowing anything about, except that he did.
In bizarre fashion, the New York Times reporters who interviewed Thompson at the Times’ headquarters allowed him to refer only to anonymous “senior management in BBC News” that he spoke with about Savile. This, of course, freed the Times from any obligation to follow up with those figures and to find out whether Thompson was telling the truth about saying nothing to them about killing the story on Savile. Uncovering problems with his statement would, of course, damage his new prospects in Manhattan.
Even more bizarre, the story refers only to an anonymous “New York Times spokesman” when reporting the paper’s statement that it still expected Thompson to join the paper next month, and makes no attempt to grill that spokesman about the implications.
The Times’ own public editor is highly dubious about Thompson and the Times’ coverage of him. The comments on her blog post overwhelmingly call for Thompson’s ouster. She specifically challenged the paper’s reporters, stating:
I hope the Times rises to the challenge and thoroughly reports what it finds. The Times might start by publishing an in-depth interview with Mr. Thompson exploring what exactly he knew, and when, about what happened at the BBC.
That’s exactly what the paper did not do. Instead, its “reporting” only helps Thompson and the paper sweep the whole mess under the carpet.
Savile was also the Russian Dick Clark…
Don’t you mean “the British Dick Clark”?
Her normal beat is Russia. Musta been force of habit.
Anyone wanna bet Thompson is also a pedo?
Thompson and Saville sound like the NYT’s kind of men.
You’re using that term, “men”, rather loosely there, aren’t you?
No, there’s no reason for thinking “Thompson is also a pedo” [2. Aztikal]. If you don’t work for the BBC, it’s hard to believe how “independent” (and therefore confused) lines of responsibility and reporting are as they reach up to higher management. It’s perfectly possible for Thompson never to have met Savile, or only casually on very few occasions, and for Savile to have been dealt with only by people technically subordinate to Thompson but in practice jealous of their editorial and business independence, and so loth to divulge “mere gossip” that they may have heard.
Mark Thompson’s style was different from that of his predecessor, Greg Dyke. Dyke indeed departed from the classic BBC pattern that I’ve sketched above, and was felt to be something of a “the buck stops here” kind of autocrat. Also, his membership of the Labour Party and friendship with Tony Blair were thought by some to be controversial. Thompson contrasted in reverting to the “maximum editorial and business independence” concept for all more junior managers, and in being much more colourlessly non-political.
I don’t know whether he’ll maintain this approach in his new job with the New York Times, and whether this will be good for that publication, or the worst thing possible.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2221078/Jimmy-Savile-liberal-left-encouraged-sexualisation-children.html
Yes there is….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2221078/Jimmy-Savile-liberal-left-encouraged-sexualisation-children.html
No, Mike, I still don’t think that there is reason for your assertion.
The article you cite is by Melanie Phillips, for whom I have much respect for her writing on Israel-Palestine issues, Islamism and antisemitism in Britain and elsewhere: she’s author of Londonistan and The World Turned Upside Down. However, I think that she often clouds these issues by representing them as arising from any departure from a severe moral conservatism – one which in Britain, entailed the old ‘culture of deference’, very much alive as late as the 1950s or early 1960s, a suffocating royalism and respect for a fundamentally non-democratic established order. Yes, part of the departure from this in Britain was to participate in the 1960s-1970s ‘sexual revolution’, probably more spectacular in the US than here. Yes, an undercurrent in that revolution, in both countries and elsewhere, was a sinister NAMBLA-style notion that children too are sexual and that this should be encouraged. Yes, the whole sexual-revolution thing, in all countries where it happened, was felt to be part of the Left, not of the Right. Yes, the BBC as a whole, like so many media organizations (actually more generally in the US than in Britain) tends to belong to the Left, not to the Right.
But how in Heaven’s name can you extract from this list of observations, which are unexceptionable but quite broad and vague, the specific and libellous allegation that one particular manager at the BBC, not mentioned in Melanie Phillips’s article and not even one cited for covering Savile’s tracks, ‘is also a pedo’?
Nice talking points. How about some facts that can be verified. My take on the post is there is a colossal lack of facts coming from the BBC and/or the NYT.
Saville (may he long burn in Hell) said Gary Glitter using children as sex objects was up to him as a person. That is the rotting stench of moral relativism playing out among the rich and well connected. Ideas have consequences.
In Vietnam, Gladd was caught in bed with two 14-year-old girls. As per Vietnamese law, he was given a choice: death by firing squad or two years in prison and $460 in restitution to the victims.
if the NYT fails to sweep this story under the rug, their relentless attacks on the “pedophile priests” in the catholic church will smack of high hypocrisy.
I think that didn’t come out right.
For the NYT high hypocrisy is the norm.