One aspect the BBC is being studiously silent about is the charge from Cliff and South Yorkshire police that they misused the information the Police supplied them with to sensationalise the search. It became the overall coverage of the day, almost to the exclusion of some very serious world affairs, and the refusal to account for the action shows not only a continuation of the cover-ups of the 1960s this may be part of, but also a refusal to accept the recommendations of the Leveson Commission into the relationships between the Press and the Police. It furthermore demonstrates that the Press cannot be self-regulating as it insists.
Part of this is, of course, the absence of top management in the BBC Trust. Designed to be a toothless organisation from the very start - I recall protesting the fact on the BBC columns, something which got me banned from there, the use of industry insiders put the writing on the wall - it has been further enfeebled by the failure to appoint a new Chairman after Chris Patten resigned at the start of May. The post is currently in the care of the Vice Chair, Diane Coyle, whose husband just happens to be Rory Cellan-Jones, a BBC News technology journalist. His blog's latest entry is rather revealing, as it shows how his son has a different information-gathering network from his own and his wife's, a network which is less susceptible to massage and management, and shows that the Establishment (and you don't get much more Establishment than Acting Chair of the BBC Trust, member of the Competition Commission until its closure in April, time she's retasking as Professor of Economics at Manchester, having followed an Oxford PPE with a Harvard Doctorate in Economics and a couple of years in HM Treasury) has its eyes on controlling that too.