In the wake of the announcement that George Entwistle had resigned from his position as director general over the fiasco surrounding Newsnight, the programme’s presenter Jeremy Paxman issued a statement saying Entwistle had been "brought low by cowards” and that the problems at Newsnight were not "unique to the programme".
He said: “George Entwistle’s departure is a great shame. He has been brought low by cowards and incompetents.
“The real problem here is the BBC’s decision, in the wake of the Hutton inquiry, to play safe by appointing biddable people. They then compounded the problem by enforcing a series of cuts on programme budgets, while bloating the management.”
Paxman went on to say that such failures will go beyond the Newsnight programme: “This is how you arrive at the current mess on Newsnight. I very much doubt the problem is unique to the programme.”
Paxman ended his statement offering support for Entwistle: “I had hoped that George might stay to sort this out.It is a great pity a talented man had been sacrificed while time-servers prosper. I shall not be issuing any further statements or doing any interviews.”