i seem to have missed exactly what Newsnight did in respect of Lord McAlpine.



I know the whole story but as i understand it they did not name him or identify him, what exactly did they do? A link would be useful



I have to say the whole thing to me appears to be blown out of all proportion for political reasons. The BBC is still the best and most Independent TV news programme out there.



Mistakes were made about the Jimmy Saville documentary but then again most of the media , entertainment and political industry seems tio have made mistakes as well.

What happened is that with Savile they DIDN't do something that they subsequently realise that they SHOULD have done, and so the next time around (Nth Wales) they DID do something but were extremely careful not to implicate any named individual, just to be on the safe side.



Turns out they were wrong twice, well according to the people who want to have a pop at them for any old reason at all, if they had a stronger senior management they'd use a well placed "f*** off" here and there to shut a few professional critics up.

The [iNewsnight[/i in question didn't name anyone.



It appears that the police had originally shown abuse victim Steve Messham a photograph for him to identify. He said that it was a picture of one of his abusers. It was the police who then told him that it was Lord McAlpine.



There is no suggestion that I have seen that Waterhouse was all rubbish and that there was no abuse, or that an (or some) important person was involved.



The agency should have checked the identification issue – but the fact that it didn't is being used to pretend, in effect, that the entire story was a tissue of lies.



It's political opportunism – and not least since there are newspapers out there screaming for BBC heads to roll when they would never demand that anyone quit if they'd been caught do something wrong.



For instance, how many executives at the [iSun[/i, the [iDaily Mirror[/i, the [iSunday Mirror[/i, the [iDaily Mail[/i, the [iDaily Record[/i, the [iDaily Express[/i, the [iDaily Star[/i and the [iScotsman[/i after being found guilty, in a court of law, of libel in the case of Chris Jefferies?



The [iMail[/i yesterday set out to smear Messham – that's right: it set out to smear a victim of child abuse. But then given it's own proclivity for making profit from the sexualisation of underage girls, it's perhaps not really surprising. Children are simply commodities for the likes of Paul Dacre to make money from. And anyone who tries to raise the issue of abuse back from the metaphorical graveyard in which it was hidden, when the findings were, in effect, buried, is the problem.



The prime problem with the BBC is that it hasn't had the balls to tells certain people where to get off.



It does raise a slightly different issue, though: that people using social media need to learn some sense of responsibility. People rushing around to name all and sundry has done the victims no good at all either.

It's a political game of beating up the BBC. That said the BBC are so self-obsessed they think they are the news. If they weren't so abjectly 'narcissistic' no one would give it all a second thought because it is utterly trivial in the great scheme of things.

I'd agree to a point, but I think the BBC are in a catch-22 here. If they report it they can be accused of self-obsession, if they don't report it they will most certainly be accused of trying to sweep it under the carpet.

Like most people, I am at a loss to know what's really going on.

My best guess is politicians who don't like the BBC are having a pop at them.



Who would these politicians be?

At a guess, those who don't subscribe to the idea of a state-funded broadcaster, plus those who have been put through the wringer on Newsnight, plus those who seek to take control of the Beeb's output.



As previous posters have said, the Beeb should take a much more robust stance on this and tell politicians to butt-out.

But then, taking half a million quid to resign might seem a comfy option under the circumstances.

Social media is pretty much street gossip ... but available for all to see.

You're right, people need to learn to differentiate between the two media.

[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/9671346/BBC-investigation-Smearing-an-innocent-mans-name-is-the-real-tragedy-here.htmlBoris Johnson, for one[/url. Who ignores the facts (that nobody was named by the BBC) and declares that the 'smearing' of Lord McAlpine is "the real tragedy". So, not the child abuse, then, Boris?

That will have put Boris in Rupert's good books.

Nice prep for his bid for the Tory leaderfship.

It's one thing reporting it, quite another to report it to the extent they have been doing.

Would you have said that if it had been a Sky News report making untrue allegations about a Labour peer?

The BBC report did not name anyone. It did not, therefore, make "untrue allegations about a Labour peer".



Whether true or false, there have been rumours about Lord McAlpine for years – these have even appeared in blogs. No BBC programme was required to create that situation.



It was apparently the police who misnamed McAlpine when Steve Messham identified a photograph of one of his abusers. Not the BBC. That the investigation team should have checked the identification is another point, but it does not change this one.



Nobody appears to be suggesting that there was no abuse in North Wales – yet this is almost, in effect, what some are effectively using this situation to imply. The Waterhouse Inquiry never named names and there were no prosecutions, although it found evidence of abuse. The previous inquiry saw all its papers pulped. It's little wonder suspicions abound of a cover up.



Now we've dealt with the factually incorrect suggestion contained in your question – in answer to what you really want to ask: do I think any abuser should be hidden/protected? No.