Savile row
During investigations
into child abuse at Welsh children's homes, one victim implicated a high-ranking Conservative Party official in a recent Newsnight broadcast. Apparently the individual wasn't named during the programme, but later Twitter chatter wrongly named former party treasurer Lord McAlpine.
McAlpine issued a robust rebuttal, to which the BBC responded with an unreserved apology. McAlpine has since settled his claim for libel against the BBC out of court, for a total of £185,000 plus costs. This will be borne by the licence fee-payers, which he himself acknowledges, and apparently took into consideration in reaching a swift settlement.
This is all very well and good, and I have no objection to McAlpine being compensated for an unwarranted and grievous slur to his reputation. But is it right that the licence fee-payer bears the brunt of the BBC's editorial carelessness?
In my wholly uneducated and unsolicited opinion, the real transgressors here are the journalists and editors who did sloppy work, and the vacuous imbeciles whose deepest thoughts can be summarised in no more than 140 characters twitterati
, who ran with it and wrongly concluded that McAlpine was the paedophile in question.
Those are the people who should be paying for their unprofessional behaviour and crass stupidity. (pipe)
Yes, I realise that the Newsnight programme was not addressing the investigations into Jimmy Savile specifically. But the title is a nice pun anyway. Besides, Lord McAlpine is more likely to shop on Savile Row than I'm ever likely to be able to afford to. Especially since he's just trousered a cool 185 large.