BBC needs ‘radical overhaul’: chairman

LONDON - The Associated Press

Director-General of the BBC, George Entwistle (C) speaks to the media after attending a Commons culture committee in London in this October photo. AFP photo

The head of the BBC’s governing body said yesterday the broadcaster needs a radical overhaul following the resignation of its chief executive in wake of a scandal over a botched report on child sex-abuse allegations.

Chris Patten vowed to restore confidence and trust in the BBC, which is reeling from the resignation of George Entwistle and the scandals prompting his ouster. Entwistle resigned Nov. 10 night amid a storm of controversy after a news program wrongly implicated a British politician in a child sex-abuse scandal, deepening a crisis sparked by revelations it decided not to air similar allegations against one of its own stars, Jimmy Savile, the late BBC television star now alleged to have been a prolific child sex offender.

 Patten told the BBC he will not resign, saying he must ensure the publicly-funded broadcaster “has a grip” and gets back on track. “My job is to make sure that ... we restore confidence and trust in the BBC,” he said, and called for a “thorough, radical structural overhaul.”

 The scandal comes at a sensitive time for Britain’s media establishment, struggling to recover from an ongoing phone-hacking scandal which brought down the nation’s best-selling Sunday newspaper, led to the arrests of dozens of journalists and prompted a judge-led inquiry into journalistic ethics and the ties between politics and the news media.