BBC Director General George Entwhistle has resigned from his position with the broadcasting giant. The Daily Shift’s Sean Defoe has more…
Former BBC Director General George Entwhistle
George Entwhistle has resigned from his post as BBC Director General, citing “the wholly exceptional events of the past few weeks” as the reason he believes that the BBC needs a new leader.
Mr Entwhistle’s resignation follows a turbulent few weeks for the BBC. Child abuse claims came to the fore recently surrounding the late presenter Jimmy Saville. This was followed by an inaccurate report on the BBC’s Newsnight programme that labelled Lord McAlpine of West Green as a paedophile.
BBC Trust Chairman Lord Patten called the Newsnight scandal “unacceptable shoddy journalism.”
This combination of events made Mr Entwhistle’s job untenable. In a statement he outlined his reasons for stepping down.
“In the light of the fact that the Director-General is also the Editor-in-Chief and ultimately responsible for all content and in the light of the unacceptable journalistic standards of the Newsnight film broadcast on Friday 2nd November; I have decided that the honourable thing to do is to step down from the post of Director-General.”
Mr Entwhistle had only been in his position for 54 days.
A temporary Director General will be put in place and the search for Mr Entwhistle’s replacement will begin soon, according to Lord Patten.
