NY Times Still Ignoring CEO’s Link to BBC Pedophilia Scandal
However The New York Times determines which news is “fit to
print,” we know it doesn’t include stories involving its own CEO and a
notorious underage sex scandal.
A forthcoming report from an investigation by Dame Janet Smith will show that the BBC ignored the rape and sexual assault of up to 1,000 minors by one of its stars, on its property over the course of decades. According to the Guardian (UK), Smith’s report will state that “the true number of victims of [DJ and TV host Jimmy] Savile’s sexual proclivities may never be known but that his behavior had been recognized by BBC executives who took no action.”
Savile, a popular BBC fixture and philanthropist for many years, died in 2011, and the Guardian predicts that the publication of the new report will plunge the BBC “into a major crisis.”
While the Guardian was on the case, The New York Times was not – a curious disinterest from the paper that doggedly tried to trace church sexual abuse scandals up through Catholic hierarchy to then Pope Benedict XVI. In fact, in just two months of 2010, the Times ran 64 articles on the pope addressing abuse within the church – 13 of them on page one. In 31 percent of the stories, the Times mentioned tendentious links between the Pope and individual cases.
In the BBC case, of
course, there are no prominent Christian leaders to smear and cast doubt on.
But there is a prominent secular leader – at least in the world of The New York
Times – and his relation to the Savile scandal does indeed raise serious
issues.
Mark Thompson, CEO of the Times since Nov., 2012, was head of the BBC in 2011, when the network decided to abruptly abandon a documentary investigating longstanding pedophilia allegations against Savile. And Thompson was a 32-year BBC veteran, yet he claimed to have known nothing about rumors about Savile over the years, and has said he had no hand in squelching the investigative report about the Savile. His account conflicted with others at the BBC, and questions about his knowledge and actions remain.
Yet after the Savile died and public allegations blew up in Oct. 2011, the Times ran just 16 news stories mentioning the controversy. Only 10 of them mentioned Thompson. More than two years on, the Times hasn’t run a story mentioning the Savile case and Thompson’s connection to it since August of last year.
It remains to be seen if the “major crisis” to come at the BBC will cross the Atlantic and embroil Thompson. One thing is certain, however. The Times won’t pursue the story with anything like the enthusiasm it showed when it was trying to give the pope and his church a black eye.
