Forget about the nude photos....
"BBC scandal grows with 300 abuse allegations" by Alan Cowell | New York Times, October 26, 2012
LONDON — The scale of the sexual abuse scandal at the BBC widened significantly Thursday as police reported that the number of people accusing one of Britain’s best-known television hosts of misconduct had risen to about 300 from 200, and said other people may have acted with him.
The police account also seemed to reinforce British news reports that the inquiries into accusations of sexual abuse against the host, Jimmy Savile, were spreading to broader questions about possible misconduct in other parts of the BBC and to suggestions of networks of abuse at hospitals associated with Savile’s ostensibly philanthropic works.
Police said the number of potential victims had increased as more people contacted officers with abuse accusations. All but two of the cases involved girls, Peter Spindler, a police commander, told reporters. He said detectives had interviewed 130 people so far, and those conversations had produced 114 ‘‘allegations of crime.’’
He also said that while most of the accusations related to Savile, other people may have acted either with him or separately. No arrests have been made so far, but officers are ‘‘preparing an arrest strategy,’’ he said.
The scandal has drawn in several top figures at the BBC, including its current director general, George Entwistle, who took over in September from Mark Thompson, the incoming president and chief executive of The New York Times Co.
A rat deserting a sickening ship?
Thompson was director general of the BBC when the editor of a current affairs program canceled an investigation into Savile in late 2011, just as other divisions of the BBC were planning Christmastime tributes to him a few months after his death at age 84.
Thompson has said repeatedly that he knew nothing about the investigation by the ‘‘Newsnight’’ program while it was under way, had no role in canceling it and also had heard none of the suspicions about Savile.
The British Sgt. Schultz.
On Thursday, Thompson won an enthusiastic endorsement from Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the chairman of The New York Times Co. and the publisher of The Times.
The WHOLE of WESTERN MEDIA is ILL, folks.
UPDATE: New York Times columnist attacks 'willfully ignorant' Mark Thompson and openly questions his ability to take over as paper's CEO
Maybe the Times should find someone else.
--more--"
Related: BBC director defends handling of sex abuse crisis
How can any one defend such things?
Let's look to those with experience:
"Vatican won’t pull honor for BBC host
LONDON — The Vatican said Saturday it never would have given Jimmy Savile a papal knighthood had it known of allegations the BBC television host, was a child sex predator, but said it cannot rescind the honor now that he has died. The Catholic Church of England asked the Holy See last week to consider whether it could remove the honor (AP)."
Just SOP for the church.
"Former judge opens second BBC inquiry" by Alan Cowell | New York Times, October 30, 2012
LONDON — The British Broadcasting Corp. said Monday that a former senior judge has begun an inquiry into the corporation’s ‘‘culture and practices’’ that lay behind the sexual abuse scandal surrounding television host Jimmy Savile.
Inquiry is British for cover-up.
The inquiry, one of two independent reviews commissioned by the BBC, opened on the first anniversary of Savile’s death at age 84 and a day after British police, widening the scandal, arrested a former pop star in connection with the case.
The Metropolitan Police on Sunday arrested Paul Gadd, better known as Gary Glitter from the 1970s heyday of glam rock, who is a convicted pedophile. Gadd’s arrest came after accusations that he abused a teenage girl on the premises of the BBC. He was released on bail after being questioned in a London police station.
Related: British rocker arrested in sex abuse inquiry
Since the British television station ITV broadcast a documentary about Savile earlier this month, some 300 people have come forward saying that they were abused by the outlandish television star.
They described a depraved environment in Savile’s dressing room at the BBC studios where teenage girls were molested by Savile and others, including Gadd.
The investigation by Dame Janet Smith, a former appeals court judge, is one of two that the BBC has commissioned into the scandal.
The other by Nick Pollard, a former head of the rival Sky News, is looking specifically into a decision last December by an editor at the BBC to cancel an investigation of Savile’s misconduct at a time when other sections of the corporation were planning Christmastime tributes to him.
Compared with the Leveson Inquiry, which involved public hearings on the behavior of the British press in the separate phone hacking scandal, the inquiries into the BBC’s behavior seemed more opaque....
The case has shocked the nation and shone an intense spotlight on the BBC. Nagging questions remain about why the investigation by the ‘‘Newsnight’’ program was abruptly canceled, and how much BBC executives knew about allegations that one of its stars had engaged in widespread sexual molestation in the 1970s and 1980s.
--more--"
Also see: Pedophiles exposed in the UK
He's right: Aangirfan is the authority when it comes to these sorts of things.
Then there is the voyeurism of Rupert Murdoch's spying operation:
"Rupert Murdoch steps down from News Corp. boards" Associated Press, July 22, 2012
"BBC scandal grows with 300 abuse allegations" by Alan Cowell | New York Times, October 26, 2012
LONDON — The scale of the sexual abuse scandal at the BBC widened significantly Thursday as police reported that the number of people accusing one of Britain’s best-known television hosts of misconduct had risen to about 300 from 200, and said other people may have acted with him.
The police account also seemed to reinforce British news reports that the inquiries into accusations of sexual abuse against the host, Jimmy Savile, were spreading to broader questions about possible misconduct in other parts of the BBC and to suggestions of networks of abuse at hospitals associated with Savile’s ostensibly philanthropic works.
Police said the number of potential victims had increased as more people contacted officers with abuse accusations. All but two of the cases involved girls, Peter Spindler, a police commander, told reporters. He said detectives had interviewed 130 people so far, and those conversations had produced 114 ‘‘allegations of crime.’’
He also said that while most of the accusations related to Savile, other people may have acted either with him or separately. No arrests have been made so far, but officers are ‘‘preparing an arrest strategy,’’ he said.
The scandal has drawn in several top figures at the BBC, including its current director general, George Entwistle, who took over in September from Mark Thompson, the incoming president and chief executive of The New York Times Co.
A rat deserting a sickening ship?
Thompson was director general of the BBC when the editor of a current affairs program canceled an investigation into Savile in late 2011, just as other divisions of the BBC were planning Christmastime tributes to him a few months after his death at age 84.
Thompson has said repeatedly that he knew nothing about the investigation by the ‘‘Newsnight’’ program while it was under way, had no role in canceling it and also had heard none of the suspicions about Savile.
The British Sgt. Schultz.
On Thursday, Thompson won an enthusiastic endorsement from Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the chairman of The New York Times Co. and the publisher of The Times.
The WHOLE of WESTERN MEDIA is ILL, folks.
UPDATE: New York Times columnist attacks 'willfully ignorant' Mark Thompson and openly questions his ability to take over as paper's CEO
Maybe the Times should find someone else.
--more--"
Related: BBC director defends handling of sex abuse crisis
How can any one defend such things?
Let's look to those with experience:
"Vatican won’t pull honor for BBC host
LONDON — The Vatican said Saturday it never would have given Jimmy Savile a papal knighthood had it known of allegations the BBC television host, was a child sex predator, but said it cannot rescind the honor now that he has died. The Catholic Church of England asked the Holy See last week to consider whether it could remove the honor (AP)."
Just SOP for the church.
"Former judge opens second BBC inquiry" by Alan Cowell | New York Times, October 30, 2012
LONDON — The British Broadcasting Corp. said Monday that a former senior judge has begun an inquiry into the corporation’s ‘‘culture and practices’’ that lay behind the sexual abuse scandal surrounding television host Jimmy Savile.
Inquiry is British for cover-up.
The inquiry, one of two independent reviews commissioned by the BBC, opened on the first anniversary of Savile’s death at age 84 and a day after British police, widening the scandal, arrested a former pop star in connection with the case.
The Metropolitan Police on Sunday arrested Paul Gadd, better known as Gary Glitter from the 1970s heyday of glam rock, who is a convicted pedophile. Gadd’s arrest came after accusations that he abused a teenage girl on the premises of the BBC. He was released on bail after being questioned in a London police station.
Related: British rocker arrested in sex abuse inquiry
Since the British television station ITV broadcast a documentary about Savile earlier this month, some 300 people have come forward saying that they were abused by the outlandish television star.
They described a depraved environment in Savile’s dressing room at the BBC studios where teenage girls were molested by Savile and others, including Gadd.
The investigation by Dame Janet Smith, a former appeals court judge, is one of two that the BBC has commissioned into the scandal.
The other by Nick Pollard, a former head of the rival Sky News, is looking specifically into a decision last December by an editor at the BBC to cancel an investigation of Savile’s misconduct at a time when other sections of the corporation were planning Christmastime tributes to him.
Compared with the Leveson Inquiry, which involved public hearings on the behavior of the British press in the separate phone hacking scandal, the inquiries into the BBC’s behavior seemed more opaque....
The case has shocked the nation and shone an intense spotlight on the BBC. Nagging questions remain about why the investigation by the ‘‘Newsnight’’ program was abruptly canceled, and how much BBC executives knew about allegations that one of its stars had engaged in widespread sexual molestation in the 1970s and 1980s.
--more--"
Also see: Pedophiles exposed in the UK
He's right: Aangirfan is the authority when it comes to these sorts of things.
Then there is the voyeurism of Rupert Murdoch's spying operation:
"Rupert Murdoch steps down from News Corp. boards" Associated Press, July 22, 2012
LONDON — Saturday’s announcement suggests media mogul Rupert Murdoch may be distancing himself from his British newspaper interests, which have been shaken to the core by a widespread phone-hacking scandal.
--more--"
That must have made him mad.
LONDON — The phone-hacking investigation in Britain, which began with Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers, has broadened to include allegations that information was obtained from stolen cellphones, significant payoffs were made to public officials, and ‘‘medical, banking, and other personal records’’ were illegally accessed, a senior police officer told a judicial inquiry Monday....
The authorities are trying to establish whether the thefts were isolated incidents or ‘‘the tip of the iceberg,’’ said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers of Scotland Yard...
Another inquiry, into bribes paid to public officials, has led to 41 arrests — including 23 current and former journalists, four police officers, nine current and former public officials, and others who were conduits for the bribes.
--more--"
"8 charged in British phone hacking" by John F. Burns and Ravi Somaiya | New York Times, July 25, 2012
LONDON — After a year of furious controversy over the widespread phone hacking by one of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspapers, British prosecutors brought criminal charges Tuesday against eight of the most prominent figures in the scandal, including Andy Coulson, who was Prime Minister David Cameron’s communications chief at 10 Downing St. until the scandal forced his resignation last year.
Also charged was Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of Murdoch’s newspaper empire in Britain until she, too, resigned last summer. Others who were indicted include five journalists who played prominent roles at News of the World, the tabloid where Brooks and later Coulson were the top editors at the time that the hacking is alleged to have occurred, from 2000 to 2006.
The criminal charges — and the possibility of prison terms if prosecutors win convictions — are a sharp turning point in the affair, adding the drama of high-profile trials to a saga that has already thrown the worlds of politics, policing, and journalism in Britain into a prolonged fit of self-examination and shaken the foundations of the Murdoch empire.
Does that mean they are going to start reporting the truth?
The eighth person charged was Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who served a prison term in 2007, together with News of the World’s reporter specializing in coverage of Britain’s royal family, for hacking into the cellphones of younger members of the royal family and their aides. Those convictions remain the only ones so far in the hacking furor.
After Tuesday’s announcement by Alison Levitt, the senior legal adviser at the Crown Prosecution Service, headlines in Britain focused on Coulson and Brooks, both of whom have strong personal links to Cameron — Coulson through his years at Cameron’s side, in and out of government, and Brooks because of the friendship she and her husband, Charlie Brooks, had with Cameron before the scandal erupted.
Political analysts said the fact that the two now face criminal trials that seem certain to run on at least through the next year, attracting wide news coverage, posed a potentially serious hazard to the prime minister. With a general election due in 2015, the analysts said, Cameron and the Conservative Party are now potentially vulnerable to any new revelations that might emerge from the trials, in the form of hitherto unpublished e-mails or testimony touching on the prime minister’s dealings with Coulson or Rebekah Brooks.
The charges, the most significant so far in a scandal that has rocked British public life and shaken faith in the media, politics, and police, relate to allegations that hundreds of celebrities, politicians, and others named in news stories had their voice mails intercepted by News of the World in search of scoops.
And there wasn't much in them to begin with.
They refer specifically to more than a dozen high-profile figures, including actors Jude Law, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie, who prosecutors say were targeted between 2000 and 2006.
A spokesman for the prime minister said he had no comment on the matter, beyond his public statements.
--more--"
But he did take action:
"Cameron shakes up cabinet in Britain, but barely" by JOHN F. BURNS | NY Times Syndication, September 05, 2012
LONDON — In a bid to reshape his government halfway through its five-year term, Prime Minister David Cameron shook up his Cabinet on Tuesday, but produced only one major surprise: the promotion of a Cameron insider, Jeremy Hunt, to health minister, despite his entanglement in a furor over ties between the prime minister’s inner circle and Rupert Murdoch’s scandal-tainted media empire.
?????? Promoted?
The Cabinet reshuffle had been billed by Cameron aides as a move to put a ‘‘reinvigorated face’’ on the government.
I'm sure the British people are as TIRED of the MAKS as I am.
In the face of political miscues and a recession-bound economy, political commentators have grown increasingly doubtful of the prospects for Cameron’s Conservative Party in a general election expected to be held in the spring of 2015. But Cameron’s new broom turned out to be a cautious one, with no changes in any of the top ministerial posts held by Conservatives, other than health.
The big message in the reshuffle appeared to be that Cameron will not be shaken from his course on the economy, in which he has hewed closely to an austerity program that aims at cutting government outlays by an average of 20 percent over four years.
To pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
--more--"
Related: Former top Murdoch executives appear at phone hacking hearing
