NEWSNIGHT editor Peter Rippon is “stepping aside with immediate effect” while the BBC reviews its response to the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal, the corporation said today.
• Newsnight editor Peter Rippon is ‘stepping aside with immediate effect’
• BBC admits initial explanation into dropping of Newsnight investigation was ‘inaccurate or incomplete in some respects’
• BBC spokesman maintains Mr Rippon has not resigned
The BBC said his explanation as to why the show dropped its investigation into the late DJ and TV presenter was “inaccurate or incomplete in some respects” and has corrected his statement.
It said: “The BBC regrets these errors and will work with the Pollard Review to assemble all relevant evidence to enable the review to determine the full facts.
“In addition, the BBC has announced that Peter Rippon is stepping aside with immediate effect from his post while the review by Nick Pollard, the former head of Sky News, into the management of Newsnight’s investigation, is carried out.”
John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee which will take evidence from Mr Entwistle tomorrow, said they would want to know why he did not seek more information about the Newsnight investigation.
“If you were the director of vision, you were told at the time you were commissioning programmes paying tribute to Jimmy Savile that Newsnight might be about to reveal a bombshell, you wouldn’t just have a 10-second conversation. You’d say ‘Tell me more, I’m about to go public putting out these programmes making out that Jimmy Savile was this saint’, and yet it appears from this he didn’t even ask a question about what the Newsnight investigation was about,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
Mr Whittingdale said the most important question was why the Newsnight segment was dropped.
He told Sky News: “Whilst Panorama say there is no evidence the editor was leant on from outside, the explanations originally given look very thin today.”
A BBC spokesman said reports that Mr Rippon had resigned were not true.