![]() ![]() When he was captured by Mexican marines on 8 January 2016, Guzmán became the prize feather in the cap of the country’s law enforcement. As Guzmán’s lawyers liked to tell anybody who would listen, even before their client set foot in Brooklyn, he had already been convicted in the court of public opinion. The following year, that same magazine named Guzmán one of the world’s most-wanted fugitives, second to only Osama bin Laden. He has been the subject of dozens of books, two popular TV series and, in 2009, was included in Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires. In addition to smuggling thousands of tonnes of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and synthetic narcotics across the US-Mexico border, he had successfully pulled off two dramatic escapes from prisons in Mexico. ![]() The diminutive 61-year-old (his nickname, El Chapo, means “shorty” in Spanish) was known around the world as a leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, and the most high-profile drug kingpin since Pablo Escobar. There was little expectation that Guzmán would mount a convincing defence. The government called 56 witnesses, the defence called only one: an FBI agent, who finished testifying within an hour. “United States of America v Joaquín Guzmán Loera” had lasted approximately three months – it took prosecutors that long to present what they described as “an avalanche” of evidence, which had taken more than a decade to compile. Truly, the BBC is a remarkable organisation.J ust after midday on Tuesday 12 February, word came down that the verdict was ready in what had been widely described as the trial of the century. All that said, it is impossible to imagine any other media company ever washing such dirty linen in public. Though much of the initial attention has been paid to the fact that much of Pollard's interview with Newsnight's presenter, Jeremy Paxman, was redacted, it is interesting to note that he thought Jones to be "reliable".ĭoubtless some BBC hands would rather than had been redacted too. Pollard referred to an email she later sent about this clash between the two, saying: "It paints a pretty terrible picture of what was going on in your empire, shall we say?"īoaden admitted: "It does." And then she referred to her email, which said: "It seems to me this basically comes down to two boys fighting for control of a complex and complicated story." She cast the failure of Newsnight to screen the Savile investigation in terms of differences of opinion between the programme's editor, Peter Rippon, and the producer of the story, Meirion Jones. Most notably, Helen Boaden, the soon to be ex-BBC News director, was scathing about the Newsnight team, regarding them as forming "an old colonial power". I mean, in this case, you have a director general, a head of news … somebody responsible for current affairs and an experienced editor … things still get horribly screwed up."Įchoing Patten, senior BBC staff also appear to have gone in for some buck-passing. He then spread his criticism still further across the corporation's staff by saying of the BBC's investigative journalists that they had "qualities which mean that their strike rate of accuracy is not as great as one might like".Īsked by Pollard if the absence of a deputy director general had hampered the BBC's handling of the Savile crisis, Patten replied: "I don't think that the BBC needs more senior people in order to avoid making basic mistakes. He also lashed into the BBC's corporate PR team, calling it "chaotic". Though he was "saying all the right things" about reforming management in the first 11 days of his 54-day reign, Patten said things began to unravel once the Savile scandal erupted. ![]() In talking of the weak executive team around his choice of director general, Patten said sarcastically that George Entwistle "talked a good game" about reducing the number of senior managers. And so, looking at the transcript of his own interview during the Pollard review, it has come to pass.įor, in the transcripts, Patten emerges as someone prepared to dump all over senior BBC managers, including the two former director generals, Mark Thompson and George Entwistle, the man he had described just four months previously as having "the ability to give leadership to a great creative organisation". He was surely aware that the required disclosures would leave him red-faced, too. It is true that he had previously made the same promise to MPs, but it is fair now – in the light of what emerged from the Pollard inquiry transcripts on Friday – to wonder if he was hoping to avoid the embarrassment of further revelations about the BBC's botched handling of the Savile affair. Patten betrayed unusual tetchiness when replying, this time unequivocally, to say it would be done. ![]()
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