Sex abuse claims: BBC editor steps aside as scandal snowballs

British PM David Cameron accuses world’s biggest public broadcaster of changing its story.

LONDON: The editor of the BBC’s top news show stepped aside on Monday after the broadcaster admitted he gave an inaccurate account of why he dropped an investigation into sex abuse claims against late television star Jimmy Savile.

Prime Minister David Cameron accused the world’s biggest public broadcaster of changing its story and said it had questions to answer about the spiralling scandal over Savile, the colourful presenter who died last year aged 84.

Newsnight editor Peter Rippon’s earlier blog saying a programme about Savile was dropped in December last year for editorial reasons was “inaccurate or incomplete in some respects” and has been corrected, the BBC said.

“The BBC has announced that Peter Rippon is stepping aside with immediate effect from his post,” the BBC said, just hours after it had denied a report in the Daily Mail newspaper that he would resign.

It added: “The BBC regrets these errors and will work with the Pollard Review (led by Nick Pollard, a former executive at the BBC’s rival Sky News) to assemble all relevant evidence to enable the review to determine the full facts.”

The BBC investigative show Panorama to be broadcast on Monday will claim the corporation pulled the broadcast of an investigation into Savile carried out by Newsnight after coming under pressure from senior managers.

Cameron said the country was “appalled” by the tide of allegations against Savile, who with his jangling jewellery and shiny tracksuits was one of British television’s best-loved stars in the 1970s and 1980s.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 23^rd, 2012.