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The ugly truth

It was a particularly horrifying that the men in question were Muslims — eight of them Britons of Pakistani background, one an Afghan asylum-seeker — and that the victims were white British girls. The abundance of media coverage that this issue received appeared to indict the Muslims at large.

The racial bias of such journalism is currently being illustrated in spectacular fashion. Scarcely had the Rochdale ‘grooming’ story dropped out of the news, an ensuing investigation by Britain’s ITV network, broadcast earlier this month, revealed that one of the top British celebrities of the past 40 years, the late disk jockey and television presenter, Jimmy Savile, was a compulsive abuser of underage girls.

Identified in the 1970s and 80s with his hugely popular television show, Jim’ll Fix It, in which he arranged for young people to fulfil their favourite dreams, Savile also forged a reputation for charity work, raising millions on behalf of the disabled and other good causes.

However, the spate of disclosures precipitated by the ITV programme has left little doubt that Savile perpetrated gross improprieties in his dressing room when he was working for the BBC, the broadcasting organisation with which he was conspicuously associated, as well as in hospitals and care homes that he frequented. Police are following 340 lines of inquiry relating to possible abuses by the presenter who was knighted by the Queen and bore the title Sir Jimmy Savile.

Amazingly, his deviant behaviour turns out to have been common knowledge among his broadcasting colleagues. Yet at no stage was he ever called to account for it — despite suspicions of abuse that might well have justified the gravest charges being pressed against him. It is especially shocking that some of Savile’s victims found themselves being admonished for making complaints against him. Largely thanks to the BBC, the presenter enjoyed a status as a ‘national treasure’ that made him sacrosanct.

Now the Savile scandal is developing into the ugliest episode in the history of the BBC. It is extraordinary to reflect that for decades after it was established in the 1920s, the corporation was a byword for strict moral probity. Not only did the organisations’s founding Director General, the stern Scottish Presbyterian, Sir John Reith, expect the BBC to conform to the loftiest standards in its broadcasting, he also demanded impeccable conduct on the part of its staff.

Belatedly, the BBC has pledged to launch independent inquiries into the Savile affair. But it reflects ill on the corporation that it was slow to face up to the magnitude of Savile’s transgressions.

What makes the institution’s handling of the whole affair peculiarly lamentable is that, at the time of these tributes, the BBC current affairs programme, Newsnight, was preparing an exposé of Savile that included compelling testimony by victims who later took part in the ITV programme that has trashed Savile’s reputation. Yet on grounds that the BBC is finding more than a little embarrassing to explain, the episode was never broadcast.

Whether or not Newsnight was subjected to executive coercion to axe its report on Savile, there is an unfortunate impression that the BBC attempted to cover up Savile’s misdeeds. Certainly, he was long seen by the Corporation as such a prize asset that effectively he enjoyed a license to behave as he liked. The BBC programmes celebrating Savile’s career were evidently put together on the premise that fond public memories of him would guarantee sizable audience figures.

A year after his death, Jimmy Savile is a source not of fond memories but of universal revulsion. Britain’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, has suggested that steps be taken to rescind Savile’s knighthood. Meanwhile, at the request of his relatives, the headstone of his grave in his birthplace Leeds has been dismantled for fear that adjacent graves could be desecrated, and charities bearing his name are under pressure to repudiate their connection with him.

For many years, champions of commercialised media, led by Rupert Murdoch, have operated a vendetta against the BBC, maintaining that the licence fee the British public must pay in order to watch not just BBC but all television programmes is an intolerable imposition. Needless to say, its enemies have been exploiting the BBC’s discomfiture over the Savile affair to the hilt. Yet the irony is that nothing its detractors ever said has done half as much damage to the BBC as, through its blind loyalty to a depraved celebrity, the Corporation has now done to itself.

Neil Berry is a London-based writer