According to yesterday’s Sunday Times, Helen Boaden says she did alert former BBC director-general Mark Thompson to the fact that Jimmy Savile had been investigated for sex abuse when Thompson ran the corporation. This warning, she says, was made in a phone call in December 2011 — nine months before Thompson left, and seems to contradict his claim that he “never heard any allegations” about Savile when he was in charge.
Now I gather Thompson’s new colleagues at the New York Times, where he is now chief executive, want him to address the issue publicly. One tells me: “We still haven’t had all the staff town hall meetings we were meant to have with Thompson two months ago, and which he postponed because of this Savile problem.”
Has Thompson got something to hide? He hasn’t denied Boaden’s version of events. Perhaps some of his own reporters are on the case. They were the first to report the full extent of the phone hacking scandal.
