Miriam O’Reilly, the Countryfile presenter who won an age-discrimination case against the BBC, was unimpressed by yesterday’s decision to move Peter Rippon, the Newsnight editor who shelved the Jimmy Savile investigation, to the corporation’s library.
O’Reilly tweeted: “Peter Rippon discredited during (the) Savile scandal is moved so far sideways he’s now Editor BBC Online Archive. BBC tried to take his scalp. Instead they’ve taken his dignity.”
Rippon will be charged with developing an “online journal of record”, which entails choosing a television and news bulletin from every day of the year from the last 80 years to put online in some form. It’ll take him a long time to wade through all those news bulletins before he reaches 2012 and the references to Savile, Newsnight and himself.
