15 July 2013
Seven months after the Pollard Review — the inquiry into the axing of Newsnight’s Jimmy Savile investigation — was published, the BBC is going to reveal its full costs in its annual report, published tomorrow.
BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten told MPs last week that he would give them early sight of the Pollard figures but, oddly, he never produced them.
Is the BBC being coy because it spent more than the £2 million it originally claimed the Pollard Review would cost? Some of London’s top media lawyers were retained by BBC staff, with George Entwistle spending £107,000 alone on legal fees.
For the record, £2 million buys almost 14,000 licence fees.
