BBC director-general resigns - FT.com George Entwistle has resigned as director-general of the BBC saying it was the "honourable thing" to do in light of a series of journalistic scandals that have racked the broadcaster. Mr Entwistle had been in the post only since September 17. Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, said Tim Davie, who was about to take over as chief executive of the BBC's commercial arm, would be acting director-general. Mr Entwistle said in a brief statement outside Broadcasting House in central London that as the editor-in-chief, the only honourable response to the failings in the BBC's journalism in recent months was for him to resign. He has fallen victim to a growing scandal after Newsnight reported that a senior Tory figure had abused boys in a Welsh children's home in the 1970s and 1980s. Social media sites identified the perpetrator as Lord McAlpine, the former Conservative treasurer, but on Thursday the main witness retracted his accusation saying it was a case of mistaken identity. That crisis followed hot on the heels of the controversy over a decision by the same programme, Newsnight, to drop an investigation into Jimmy Savile's activities as a serial abuser of young teenage girls. Lord Patten said it was "undoubtedly one of the saddest nights in my public life," but that Mr Entwistle had done the right thing to take responsibility for "shoddy journalism" by the BBC. The BBC Trust appointed Mr Entwistle as a "safe pair of hands" after encouraging his predecessor, Mark Thompson, to leave earlier than he had planned. The appointment has proved anything but safe and despite his 23 years of experience of the corporation, most recently as head of television and a former editor of Newsnight, Mr Entwistle found the momentum of the scandal beyond his control. Mr Entwistle is the shortest-lived of the BBC's director generals in its 90-year history. His departure follows 8 years after Greg Dyke was forced out in the wake of the Hutton report into the death of the government scientist David Kelly, which followed his identification as the source of a BBC story that the government "sexed up" an intelligence report to justify going to war in Iraq. Mr Thompson is still expected to take up his new position as chief executive of the New York Times on Monday, after weeks of scrutiny by its flagship newspaper of his role during the Savile investigation. Earlier on Saturday the embattled director-general had said that the Newsnight programme accusing a senior Conservative party figure should never have been run. Although the decision to run the story by staff at Newsnight, where he suspended all further investigations, was passed up the editorial chain, he as editor-in-chief did not know about it until after its broadcast. Mr Entwistle has been heavily criticised by MPs for showing "astonishing lack of curiosity" when another Newsnight investigation, which would have revealed the entertainer Jimmy Savile to be a serial abuser of under-age girls, was dropped in December 2011. Before he resigned, Mr Entwistle ordered Newsnight to make its own grovelling on-air apology and said on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that the investigation should never have been aired. This was a piece of journalism referred to senior figures within News, referred up to the level of the management board and had appropriate attention from the lawyers. There will be questions asked as to why the reporters on Newsnight, or the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (a unit inside City University in London which conducts inquiries that are published by other media) did not show Mr Messham a photograph of Lord McAlpine. Speaking before Mr Entwistle resigned, the culture secretary Maria Miller said: "I have been clear that the BBC Trust needs to get to the bottom, and quickly, of what has gone wrong at the Corporation. The events of the last few days only serve to underline the vital importance of restoring credibility.