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Times Chairman Under Fire -- From His Own Staff

31 October 2012

Picture: Lesley Garrett and Mark Thompson 'A Celebration of the Arts' held at the Royal Academy of Arts - Outside Arrivals. London, England - 23.05.12

Times Chairman Under Fire -- From His Own Staff

New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has declined to comment on a devastating opinion piece by the paper's longtime business columnist Joe Nocera taking Sulzberger to task for standing by his decision to bring former BBC Director General Mark Thompson aboard as the company's CEO. In a column headlined Is Mark Thompson the right man for the job? Nocera argued that he is not, given his failure to look into the cancellation of a BBC news feature that would have exposed allegations that one of its most prominent hosts, Jimmy Savile, had sexually molested underage girls who visited him as fans. (Scotland Yard has said that it is looking into as many as 300 complaints from apparent victims.) Commented Nocera: Thompson winds up appearing willfully ignorant, and it makes you wonder what kind of an organization the BBC was when Thompson was running it -- and what kind of leader he was. It also makes you wonder what kind of chief executive he'd be at The Times. Nocera's remarks follow equally scathing comments from the newspaper's public editor, Margaret Sullivan, who asked, What are the implications for the Times Company to have its new C.E.O. -- who needs to deal with many tough business challenges here -- arriving with so much unwanted baggage? She urged Times reporters to aggressively pursue the question of what exactly [Thompson] knew, and when, about what happened at the BBC.

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