'Chaos and confusion': BBC forced to replace senior news executives following damning report into its 'complete inability' to deal with Jimmy Savile crisis Stephen Mitchell, deputy head of news, resigned following criticism of his role in an aborted Newsnight investigation into Savile's child abuse, detailed in an excoriating report compiled by Nick Pollard, a former head of Sky News. However other BBC executives, including Helen Boaden, Director of News and Peter Rippon, the Newsnight editor, again rejected criticism of their role in the affair and will remain at the BBC, despite Pollard's finding that "leadership and organisation seemed to be in short supply." Pollard's report vindicated the Newsnight reporters Liz MacKean and Meirion Jones, who first persuaded Savile's victims to talk on camera and who fought bitterly to prevent their investigation being quashed. "Their belief that Savile had a history of abusing young women was correct," Pollard ruled. They provided Newsnight with cogent evidence of this. The programme could have broken the story almost a year before the ITV documentary revealed it. Welcoming that vindication of the original story, Liz Dux, solicitor for 40 women who have since come forward, said: "The victims don't want to see months more of BBC navel-gazing." Pollard found no evidence to support the most serious allegation, that senior executives had placed pressure on Rippon to drop the Newsnight report, which would have exposed Savile as a paedophile, because the BBC had a series of tribute programmes planned. But his inquiry, which cost £2 million and trawled through 10,000 emails, found that the decision to abort the report was "flawed" and that Rippon had made "a bad mistake in not examining the evidence," gleaned from interviews with Savile's victims. The BBC said that Rippon and his deputy editor Liz Gibbons, will be replaced by a new team which would "revitalise" the stricken current affairs programme. Rippon, who will be found a new role at the BBC, contested Pollard's conclusion. He said: "I do not agree that my decision on this occasion was flawed." Mitchell was criticised for the "fundamental" mistake of taking the Savile story off the BBC's Managed Risk Programmes List, which flags up potentially risky projects to senior managers. Resigning after 38 years at the BBC he also rejected the findings. "Whilst I feel vindicated that the review has found that I put no undue pressure on Peter Rippon, I disagree with the remainder of Mr Pollard's criticisms in relation to me," Mitchell said. Adrian van Klaveren, Radio 5 Live Controller, reluctantly accepted a move to a new job at BBC Television. He had only held a temporary role overseeing Newsnight following the initial chaos - and was involved in approving the catastrophic 2 November report which falsely implicated Lord McAlpine in allegations of abuse at a Welsh children's home. Three BBC employees have been subject to disciplinary action as a result. In a separate report, the BBC's Editorial Standards Committee condemned a "grave breach" of the BBC's editorial standards, compounded by the use of a freelance reporter, Angus Stickler, who made a "terrible mistake" by not asking his witness to identify Lord McAlpine from a picture. Klaveren, forced to give up one of the BBC's plum roles, said his 5 Live departure was "hard to take... I am leaving as a result of events which had nothing to do with how I carried out my job here. Boaden was criticised for the "casual" and "inappropriate" way she sought to tip off George Entwistle, who later became Director-General, at a lunch, that a Savile investigation was underway when he was planning Christmas tribute programmes to the star. She should have taken "greater responsibility" when her news division was plunged into "virtual meltdown" once ITV revealed the Savile story, Pollard found. However Boaden's lawyers challenged the claim that she failed to show leadership and she will return to her Director of News post tomorrow. The report revealed that George Entwistle had failed to respond to emails sent by senior broadcasting executives, warning him of Savile's "darker side." The first was sent two years before Entwistle became Director-General. The executive said he was "queasy" about preparing an obituary on the star, then seriously ill, because he knew the "truth" about him. The email showed that "there was knowledge, not just rumour ... about the unsavoury side of Savile's character" in the BBC before and after his death. Entwistle, who quit last month following the McAlpine scandal, said he had not read a second email sent to him after the entertainer's death. Entwistle claimed he had been exonerated since the report attributed any "managerial shortcomings" to "unsatisfactory internal communications." Jonathan Dimbleby, the Any Questions host, tweeted: "All those inside as well as outside the BBC should offer grovelling apologies for accusing BBC of a Newsnight cover-up." Andrew Marr defended Mitchell, his former boss, calling him "always one of the most cautious, straight down the line, old-fashioned traditional voices in the BBC." The BBC was criticised for failing to sack anyone over an affair which has seriously damaged trust in the corporation's journalism. Ben Bradshaw, the former Labour Culture Secretary, said: "People will be asking themselves whether the level of the response from the BBC to this report today has been adequate." Tim Davie, the acting Director-General, said disciplinary action against those criticised would be "fair and proportionate." Lord Patten, BBC Trust chairman, said the report uncovered "a lack of professional camaraderie, a lack of collegial behaviour" in some parts of the BBC which he found "surprising." Tony Hall, the incoming Director-General, would be tasked with creating a new management structure which would overcome the "silo mentality," rigid bureaucratic structures and personal animosities which, according to Pollard, paralysed the BBC during its response to the crisis. Maria Miller, the Culture Secretary, said the report raised "serious questions" about the BBC's editorial and management issues. She called on the Trust to "publish all relevant evidence," including transcripts of the Pollard inquiry's interviews with the BBC figures involved. "It remains critical that we do not lose sight of the most important issue in this - the many victims of sexual abuse by Savile," Mrs Miller added. Meirion Jones said: "Last Christmas Newsnight knew - the BBC knew - that Jimmy Savile was a paedophile. We knew he'd been investigated by the police, We had the first interview with one of his victims, we had corroboration. We had footage from the 1970s victims in BBC studios with the abusers. The BBC pulled the investigation and ran the tributes into Sir Jimmy Savile that caused all this chaos and let down the victims and trust in the BBC - I hope the BBC now takes measures to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. Lord Patten said he was taking legal advice over the question of whether Entwistle might be obliged to return some of the £450,000 pay-off awarded following his resignation. One leading producer tweeted that the £2 million cost of the inquiry, inflated by legal fees for the BBC executives questioned, could have paid for an entire new comedy series. Fears that Newsnight would "bottle it again" after failing to expose the Jimmy Savile child sex abuse story "played too large a part" in the decision to air the programme's Lord McAlpine report, the BBC's investigation found. Pollard found that relationships at the top of the BBC were compounded by "an element of personal distrust."