I just read the whole BBC Dyson report and here's how it looks to an ex-insider: elite dysfunction meets the BBC's perennial problem: politicised news management through informal networks 1/...
2/ Bashir comes in with a scoop premised on the idea that MI5/6 are spying on Diana and someone is being bribed... he's new, he's Asian, he's not playing by the rules of the Old Boys who have a direct line to the spooks...
3/ He clearly breaks the rules - not just of the BBC but of journalism - but Fleet Street and the old schoolers in Current Affairs go after him because he's scooped them: the outsider, not the insider, got the story...
4/ Tony Hall would have understood this dynamic well - but as the evidence mounts, Management stage what any BBC veteran would recognise, and Dyson names - a "cover up" achieved through incuriosity...
5/ Forget the minutes of meetings and press logs - what mattered went on in the canteen, or over lunch.. same as with Savile, Iraq dossier, McAlpine... because the management culture was to create loyalty cliques...
6/ When I moved to ITN in 2013 I immediately noticed the absence of "news management" and "newsgathering" and the informal career network... ppl just asked: what's the story, how do we get it on air?
7/ There was no time - and no physical space - for the kind of office rebellions and management intrigue that Dyson uncovers, just as Pollard uncovered over Savile...
8/ The smoking gun is Bashir's reappointment in 2016 - the BBC had no need to do this, following a string of controversies. The Board should investigate it...
9/ Finally, the burglary that just happens to remove vital evidence in a spat involving the Monarchy, MI5 and the BBC... that ol' detail?Easier to work out than a Jed Mercurio plot ... 
10/ Diana's family are rightly furious. Her brother was duped. But Bashir was doing what journalists do - building a relationship in the interest of public scrutiny. He just did it in a way tabloids routinely do via proxy, buy while on the BBC's books... which was wrong...
11/ So the BBC once again creates ammo for its enemies. There's a solution: eliminate the functions of Editorial Policy, News Management, the split between programmes/newsgathering and minute all meetings...
12/ Bring in non-BBC lifers, from eg Reuters, ITN, AP to run a straight, non-politicised news and current affairs operation. Make internal recruitment neutral by banning informal contact between candidates and managers...
13/ The news output would be better, less flabby, not sculpted by backroom political decisions. Talented people would rise faster than connected people. ITN - whose C4 News the govt is trying to squash - should be the model.
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