We all pay the cost of the BBC's failures The conclusions of Nick Pollard's initial inquiry into the BBC's handling of the Jimmy Savile scandal were damning enough. This was, he said, a body where "leadership and organisation seemed to be in short supply," whose upper echelons "proved completely incapable of dealing" with the consequences of the decision to axe an investigation into the presenter's activities. Yet reading the evidence published by his team yesterday provided a deeper, and even more worrying, understanding of the extent to which the BBC is not a broadcaster, but an unwieldy collection of feuding baronies, in which managers are most concerned not with serving the public, but with preserving their own status and reputation. Take the corporation's clumsy decision to redact any testimony remotely critical of particular individuals - or its deletion of online comments from ordinary viewers, which told truths about Savile that executives did not want to hear. It is not hard to imagine what the BBC itself would say about any other organisation that behaved in this manner, particularly one that had promised to be entirely open. Such behaviour reflects a culture in which the tail wags the dog - a corporation run for the benefit of its own managers. In a telling phrase, Jeremy Paxman told Pollard that presenters and journalists such as himself were "below the salt," excluded from the meeting rooms and email chains in which key decisions were made. Helen Boaden, the head of news at the time, admitted that editors had increasingly been turned into managers - and described how Peter Rippon, the hapless Newsnight chief, was appointed not because of his journalistic skills, but because he was a reliable subaltern who could rein in this rebellious province of her empire. What is most alarming, however, is the extent to which this culture has survived largely unbowed. Tim Davie, the acting director-general, practically glowed with satisfaction as he commended how "open and transparent" the corporation has been in its handling of the Pollard report. "It is important," he concluded, "that the BBC now moves forward with the lessons learned and continues to regain the public's trust." But what lessons are those? To make people responsible for their actions? Apart from the former director-general, George Entwistle, senior executives have largely been shuffled sideways rather than shown the door. Or to restrain the vast salaries and pay-offs that distance managers from reality or responsibility? Roly Keating, who recently left to run the British Library, picked up £375,000 as a parting gift. To focus on content rather than politicking? The new director-general, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, has already hired James Purnell, the former Labour culture secretary, as "director, strategy and digital," on a salary of almost £300,000. Mr Purnell's insights may be invaluable - but he is also perfectly suited to the cosy, corporatist, Left-wing consensus that dominates the BBC. In the business world, the construction of an opulent new headquarters is often seen as a warning sign that an organisation has lost its soul. Surveying the BBC's gleaming palaces - Media City in Salford, Television Centre and Broadcasting House in London - it is hard to disagree. Some degree of bureaucracy is, of course, inevitable in an organisation of such size. Yet the BBC's has grown like Topsy, unrestrained by a Trust torn between acting as governing body and watchdog. Secure in its guaranteed stream of public money, it takes the opportunity to park its tanks squarely on others" lawns, with not a thought for the impact on the wider media ecosystem. For newspapers, for example, the existence of the sprawling BBC website grotesquely distorts the market - a problem that will only grow as separate media converge. The Savile farrago exposed deeper fault lines in the BBC's structure than anyone could have imagined. Yet it came about, ultimately, because the corporation had forgotten its most basic function: to serve the viewers, rather than the managers. What is needed is to dismantle the bloated bureaucracy and create an organisation humbler both in spirit and in ambition, one devoted solely to giving those who pay the licence fee the programmes they want, or, in the case of the Savile investigation, the ones they need.