I feel slightly sorry for the BBC over all the shenanigans over Jimmy Savile. After all, plenty of other organisations - hospitals, charities - fell for the cigar-toting kiddy-fiddler and facilitated his sordid gropings on their premises; but they aren't being lacerated in the public prints in quite the same way.
Having said that there is a case to answer, and whilst it may be true that nothing was known for certain about Savile's various exploitations, there was an easy way to make sure they didn't carry on - stop employing him. It would have been good if that obvious way out had been taken, and that might end up being the BBC's biggest mistake.
It's hard to imagine any commercial organisation beating its breast via the hair shirt as the BBC is doing now. Credit to it. I suppose you could argue that the Corporation has an obligation to try and do the right thing that Sky, for example, wouldn't have, because we, the licence-fee payers, don't have any choice but to carry on funding it, paedophile employees or no, whereas if Murdoch and his men had done something similar we could always take our subs elsewhere.
Which brings me to the thing which must humiliate the BBC the most. Of all the indignities forced on staff, there can be few more galling than the appointment to the chair of one of its Savile inquiries than a former head of Sky News. It's come to something when someone who used to work for one of Rupert Murdoch's organisations is regarded as more trustworthy than one of the Corporation's own.
Believe in better? Believe in bitter.
