Why does the BBC only name dead people as abusers?

[Geoff I]

This is taking down a lot of heads at the BBC, for something they should never of published without plenty of investigations to the matter, one thing I do not understand is why does the guy at the top have to leave the beeb with a £450k handshake was he forced out of his job, because I have just heard to replace him it will cost the BBC another 400k on top of the new salary just to get the right man in by third party companies, just a shame the people in charge of Newsnight did not do the honorable thing and resign like the head of the BBC has.

Will this effect good programs on the BBC and will Newsnight carry on?

[Saracen]

no one anywhere seems to be asking why someone would be shown a picture and told it was someone else though. did he do something and that was a clue or was it a failed way of trying to set him up?

I doubt we'll ever know. It could have been some kind of attempt at political trouble-making back in the day, or it could have been simple human cock-up, by whatever police officer identified the picture as Lord McAlpine, assuming that one actually did.

[Unique]

I doubt we'll ever know. It could have been some kind of attempt at political trouble-making back in the day, or it could have been simple human cock-up, by whatever police officer identified the picture as Lord McAlpine, assuming that one actually did.

yeah, but why is no-one asking that? hopefully the investigation will look into it and not overlook it. i think a simple mistake is unlikely, i think it's more likely he was trying to be set up or he did something

[Saracen]

yeah, but why is no-one asking that? hopefully the investigation will look into it and not overlook it. i think a simple mistake is unlikely, i think it's more likely he was trying to be set up or he did something

Like you, I seriously hope the various investigations and inquiries do look into this, and a whole raft of other issues, but I'm a bit split on it right now.

One side of me says it's time for everyone to shut up and let the inquiries do their thing, because right now, most of the righteous and a fair bit of the not-so-righteous indignation is based in large part of supposition and speculation.

The other half of me says yeah, but if I wanted to kill the story, what better way than to have a lengthy inquiry and hope everybody has dozed off and forgotten it by the time the inquiry reports, and that report will be filed for public inspection .... in a dank, dark cellar, guarded by a dragon, in a remote corner of a deserted building in a backwater part of an unknown planet in the Andromeda galaxy (passing nod of inspiration to HitchHikers Guide for that one).

[peterb]

Well it was announced as "Senior tory grandee in the Thatcher government" and Newsnight team famously set up a party to celebrate the labour victory in 1992, the one Kinnock lost, so there might have been an element of mischief making.

It is also clear (from comments by Paxman and others, that there is an element of payback from the news teams to the management. That was also clear from Entwhistles grilling by John Humphries on Saturday morning (I almost felt sorry for Entwhistle - it was a lamb to the slaughter).

I also found quite a good editorial comment from the Mirror online http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/p...s-only-1427133