Jeremy Paxman: 'I Thought about Quitting Newsnight'

Evening Express
October 5, 2013

http://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/Article.aspx/3419427

Jeremy Paxman.

NEWSNIGHT host Jeremy Paxman has admitted he “thought about” quitting the show after a scandal which saw an investigation into Jimmy Savile’s sex crimes dropped.

And a separate story led to Lord McAlpine being wrongly accused of child abuse.

He said he was still enjoying presenting the BBC2 current affairs show but admitted it had been damaged by what happened.

Asked if he considered quitting, he said: “I thought about it of course but in the end I decided that you know these were ... there were several bad decisions, they were individual bad decisions and I felt that loyalty commanded that you stayed.”

He also said senior figures at the BBC Trust – the corporation’s governing body – proposed dropping the show.

He said: “It is my belief, I have never checked this out, that there were a couple of people on the BBC Trust who thought, who overreacted, who thought that it should be shut down.”

But Paxman said that was “never a serious possibility” and he would stay with the show “as long as somebody asks me”.

The decision not to run the Savile story, which was subsequently picked up by ITV and sparked a major police investigation, indirectly cost director-general George Entwistle his job after little more than 50 days heading the corporation.

A review of events, carried out by former Sky News executive Nick Pollard, revealed rivalries and factional in-fighting at the BBC and said the decision to drop the Savile report was “flawed”.

Mr Pollard’s review, which cost the BBC millions of pounds, said its management system “proved completely incapable of dealing” with the issues raised by the axing of the story and “the level of chaos and confusion was even greater than was apparent at the time”.

A BBC spokeswoman said: “The BBC has published the Pollard report in full and we have accepted its recommendations. We have nothing further to add.”