BBC creative director Alan Yentob steps down amid Kids Company scandal
The BBC’s Alan Yentob, has stepped down from his position as creative director over claims that he tried to influence coverage of the financial irregularities and sexual abuse at the scandal hit charity which he previously chaired.
Yentob has been accused of a conflict of interests after making a phone call to Newsnight ahead of a report on the Kids Company charity which he chaired when it collapsed in August amid claims of financial mismanagement.
He is also said to have accompanied the charity’s chief executive Camila Batmanghelidjh to an interview on Radio 4’s Today programme.
The 68 year-old said the media reports and speculation over whether he tried to influence the coverage was "proving a serious distraction" when the BBC was in "particularly challenging times”.
He has previuously insisted that there was no conflict of interest in his decision to call the programme and said that he had not "abused my position at the BBC".
Tony Hall, the director general of the BBC, re-iterated that the corporation does not believe that he abused his position to try and influence its news coverage of the charity.
“For the record, BBC News considered whether Alan Yentob had influenced the BBC’s journalism on the reporting of Kids Company,” said Hall.
“They concluded that he did not. Despite that, I understand his reasons for stepping down as Creative Director. He has been thinking about this carefully for some time and we have discussed it privately on a number of occasions.”
Yentob will stand down from the £183,000 role at the end of this year but will contine to front BBC1’s Imagine series, for which he receives a further six-figure salary, and be involved in TV production at the corporation.
The BBC Trust is currently investigating whether Yentob broke editorial guidelines over his involvement in the corporation’s reporting on Kids Company.
On Tuesday, Rona Fairhead, the chairman of the BBC Trust, told Radio 4’s Today programme that it was “absolutely critical” that editorial integrity was upheld at the BBC.