Newsnight, McAlpine and the Mail

Submitted by Matthew on 21 November, 2012 - 11:17

The BBC’s actual mistake over the North Wales child abuse scandal, and it was a colossal one, was that they didn’t look for enough evidence or even test the evidence they had.

They didn’t show abuse victim Steve Messham a picture of Lord McAlpine and nor did they attempt to contact the alleged perpetrator for a response. They didn’t examine for a minute the likelihood of McAlpine being in the area at the time of the offences.

Those facts, however, were not the most important things to emerge even from the “Newsnight” interview. The hyped-up fuss about poor old Lord McAlpine has taken attention from the powerful institutions which bear responsibility for allowing Steve Messham and people like him to be abused for years.

In the interview Messham said that, as a teenager, he went to the police telling them where the abuse took place (the Crest Hotel in Wrexham) and naming the prominent abuser. They told him he was a liar and sent him on his way.

They didn’t show him a picture, or investigate or suggest that maybe it was mistaken identity and show him some other pictures. “When I made a statement to the police”, he said, “the police crossed his name out and said there was no point”. He also revealed that a second anonymous victim had also gone to the police and been sent on his way.

There is no comment on those failings in the Mail or from the execrable Piers Morgan. McAlpine is a victim more deserving of their pity than the abused; and the BBC is a target more in tune with their political agenda than a police force in hock to the wealthy and powerful.

It’s probably fair to say that socialists have some degree of instinctive sympathy for the BBC. Only “some degree” because it’s a huge corporation with a history of conservative news management and top-down managerialism.

In its coverage of everything from the general strike of 1926 to the long Irish conflict of 1968-98 the BBC has at best put a studied liberal neutrality above truth and insight and at worst served as the voice of the British establishment.

But “instinctive sympathy” because it stands alone in the broadcasting media as a publicly-owned, high-quality provider of news which is independent, at least, from wealthy and powerful proprietors. What its competitors resent most is not its public funding but its authority.

While it doesn’t command the same unconditional respect and loyalty as the NHS, it’s hard not to feel a need to side with the BBC when under attack by the right-wing press and media.

The furore over the flagship programme “Newsnight” has put this instinct to the test.

Two aspects of the “Newsnight” coverage are striking. First, BBC bosses have faced entirely justified criticism for two opposite blunders in the way they have dealt with child abuse.

They pulled a long-planned report which, as it was due to go out in December 2011, would have been the first to openly expose the criminal behaviour of Jimmy Savile while he worked for the corporation. The executive producer responsible has never clearly explained his decision, the reporters responsible were furious, and their anger will have been intensified by the fact that credit for exposing Savile then passed to an ITV team who did broadcast the allegations on 3 October.

Then, on 2 November, “Newsnight” did broadcast an interview with Steve Messham, who heavily hinted that one of his abusers was a prominent Tory backer who was still alive. There were enough clues in the interview to feed internet gossip pointing to one of the wealthy McAlpine family.

McAlpine then publicly and strenuously denied the allegations and was able to provide quite a bit of prima facie evidence to support his denial. “Newsnight”, on the other hand, could provide none and, worse, its reporters had subjected their story to little or no evidential testing. The embarrassment and the subsequent attacks were as inevitable as they were deserved.

Second, however, the BBC would have been slammed by the right-wing press no matter what they did.

If this seems like special pleading, consider the Daily Mail’s coverage the day after the fateful interview with Steve Messham was broadcast. They attacked the programme for failing to name the alleged abuser.

Rather than openly make this criticism, the Mail hid behind the pretence of reporting supposed anger of viewers that the BBC lacked courage and had let them down. The primary “viewer” then quoted was one Piers Morgan, whose tweet read “So Newsnight bottled it again tonight re naming a paedophile. And they have the gall to mock tabloids. Grow a pair, Paxo”.

The real motives of the anti-BBC press summed up in less than 140 embarrassingly adolescent characters.

The Mail also sneered at “Newsnight”’s explanation that there was (their ironic parentheses) “not enough evidence”. In fact a decision to name, or allow the interviewee to name, the alleged abuser was the one thing which could have made the broadcast even more damaging.

You can be sure that, in that case, the Daily Mail would have been first in line to condemn “Newsnight” for making such an allegation when there was in fact “not enough evidence”. Not for the first time during the Savile affair and its aftermath, the right-wing press attacked the BBC mainly for what it did right.

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