George Entwistle 'toppled after taking on warring BBC tribes' It obviously saddens me that it was partly those failings which he was determined to tackle that helped to undermine George Entwistle in his brief time as director-general. Lord Patten, whose own position has been called into question in the wake of the Jimmy Saville scandal and the broadcast of a Newsnight report linking Lord McAlpine to false allegations of child abuse, admitted that it was right for Mr Entwistle to resign just 54 days into the job. But he said that did not justify the manner in which his reputation had subsequently been "traduced." Lord Patten said it was now more important than ever to unpick "the tangled knots of management and bureaucracy" that were holding the Corporation back. He suggested that the BBC was in many ways "overmanaged," a tendency he said came from "the sheer weight and numbers of senior people, their pay, their titles, their jargon," which could distract those in senior positions from the job in hand, to produce excellent programmes. He blamed the scandals that have engulfed the BBC over the last few months on "individual judgments, behaviours and the management culture around them" and argued that alternative regulatory structures were unlikely to have made a difference. Lord Patten declined to defend the £450,000 payoff awarded to Mr Entwistle that David Cameron, the Prime Minister, has admitted was hard to justify. But he acknowledged that the subject would be discussed when he appears before the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee on Tuesday. He vowed to make a clear statement about the BBC's management failings following the publication of the Pollard report, which will examine why Newsnight's Jimmy Saville investigation was dropped. Lord Patten was lambasted in Saturday's Daily Telegraph by Greg Dyke, the former director-general of the BBC, who accused him of having no relevant experience, of "manoeuvring" Mr Entwistle into the role before abandoning him and of wanting to become "all powerful." But Lord Patten retorted: "People will compare his views with the record books." Lord Patten said: "I am really sorry that George was overwhelmed by the crisis, partly because he was involved in the controversy that triggered it. I don't think we ever recovered from that. In a thinly veiled attack at the "large sections of the press" he blamed for the subsequent criticism, he added: "It was right for George to go but I really don't much care for character assassination." He refuted suggestions that he had personally contrived to ensure Mr Entwistle got the job, insisting that it was a unanimous decision made by all 12 Trustees