Thought for today

Your esteemed blogger was invited to express an opinion on the Pollard annexes yesterday afternoon on the airwaves - and remains pleased he turned it down. I've read nearly all of the stuff now, and expect my opinions will change on a re-read.

But here's some early thoughts. First: I blame Birt.

He skipped a generation of editors when he arrived to run news as Deputy Director General. Jenny Abramsky became editor of radio news and current affairs in 1987 at the age of 41; Tony Hall became editor of television news and current affairs in 1990 at 39. Slowly but surely, everyone over the age of 45 in the division knew that their chances of a big job were gone. They either left, or hung on til exit deals arrived (then achievable at the age of 50).  Depending on your view, time-servers or the acquired wisdom of experience went out of the door.

Whilst News is responsible for hours and hours of output, the only topics of internal debate are the 10 (or previously 9) O'Clock News on BBC1; Newsnight; Panorama; and Today on Radio 4. Ambitious young turks know they must not only run one or two of these shows, they must make an impact, to avoid Logan's Run, to join senior management, and then tilt at an Executive role.  And they must make more impact than their contemporaries, inside and outside the BBC, as the pyramid of management becomes flatter, and there are fewer roles to tilt at. As an old colleague reminded me last month, part of the job specification to run the  four Crown Jewel shows seemed to demand confidence-bordering-on-autocratic-arrogance - and that's what the teams that produced the glittering output liked, and often aped.

Now we start to run into trouble. Impact came to mean scoops - big interviews that make headlines and establishment-rattling investigations. As we moved through the Millennium, teams concealed and manouevred, to provide their leaders with the  c.v. they required to progress. They rubbished others' work - across all forms of journalism. The leaders sought aggressive fixers, daring reporters, and brilliant but biddable minds; HR were left to pick up the pieces of those that didn't make the grade.

Budget cuts, however, meant that, if you didn't axe shows, you had to cut their resources. The easy cut is dedicated reporting and investigation effort - and managers like Helen Boaden and Steve Mitchell had to argue that young turks could "share" more stories, because the audience wouldn't mind. This is a message that makes no sense to the warring teams, and never has done.

Now we add some more of the Pollard/Savile protagonists to the mix, and look at their evidence and emails. Whatever Peter Rippon was like when he got the Newsnight job, by the time we come to the last quarter of 2011, we have a vacillator, who has largely "lost" the dressing room. We have Meirion Jones and Liz McKean, producer and reporter, who are certain that the story "stands up", and can't believe it's not running. We have a much wider circle across news who knew the story was coming, and then know it's dropped. In January and February, this gets worse, through the efforts of Miles Goslett, yapping at the BBC's heels. News' response is about protecting reputations. A position of high dudgeon is maintained - the story was dropped for editorial reasons (code for it didn't stand-up).  At this stage, nobody does a forensic job on what Jones/McKean/Livingston actually had. As far as I can tell, neither Peter, or any manager above him ever watched the material that had been filmed. That may even have lasted until ITV made their version of the same story in October 2012.

This protection of reputation becomes an unwavering stance. Nothing must happen to stain Mark Thompson,  in his final months as DG; as George emerges as his successor, we must protect his new role, and his history, as Director of Vision. As cock-up becomes clear with the award-winning ITV investigation, the hunt for a head on a pole becomes vicious. Panorama takes up the shining sword of unhelpfulness and lays into Newsnight, just like the good old days. Newsnight without Rippon seeks to regain the tough-guy title, and trips up entering the ring over McAlpine. The unspoken feuding between those in top roles, and those who would supplant them, is still going on when Pollard conducts his interviews; the rubbishing of other people's positions and actions takes columns and columns.

Meanwhile Pollard, surprisingly for a hack, gets tangled in process, and, presumably encouraged by barristers, remorsely pursues the issue of a-list-of-risky-programmes-in-the-making, with an interest close to OCD.

I can already smell a training course on list maintenance being part of the BBC's inevitable lessons-learned response. It's simpler than that. BBC News dropped one of the stories of the year, when it was in their hands. And the organisation spent a year fixated on the protection of reputations, as others looked for evidence that made the Savile story stronger - and more damaging to the wider BBC.