IT TOOK decades for Jimmy Savile to become a beloved national institution, but only a few weeks for his ghost to trash another one. On October 3rd a documentary screened on ITV, a commercial broadcaster, showed interviews with several people who claimed they had been abused as children by Savile, a hugely popular BBC presenter who had died a year earlier. Since then the police have been deluged with further accounts of abuse, not all of it allegedly perpetrated by Savile.

The BBC has been shaken. Managers stand accused of ignoring persistent wrongdoing, some of which is said to have occurred on BBC premises. A tardy and inept response has thrown an unflattering light on the corporation’s ability to handle a crisis, exposed flaws in its bureaucracy and cast doubt on the vigour of its corporate governance. The BBC is fighting both internally and with the government.

The casus belli was a ground-breaking investigation by BBC Two’s “Newsnight” programme into Savile’s alleged offences. When this was delivered to Peter Rippon, the programme’s editor, in late November 2011, he initially indicated enthusiasm, then pulled the film, for reasons which remain disputed. One of the journalists who interviewed some of Savile’s victims has claimed that the intervention was the result of “a long political chain” of influence in the news division of the BBC. Whoever yanked that chain, the broadcaster missed its chance to expose Savile’s crimes after scant discussion. Instead it broadcast a Christmas tribute to the late presenter.

George Entwistle, the BBC’s new director-general, has announced two inquiries, yet remains under fire. In an uncomfortable appearance before the House of Commons culture committee on October 23rd, he admitted that in his previous job as “head of Vision” (running the BBC’s TV arm) he had not inquired into the nature of the “Newsnight” programme when a senior colleague told him it might disrupt the Christmas schedules. Nor did he ask why it was never aired. Perhaps more hazardous for Mr Entwistle’s future tenure, he failed to probe the matter more thoroughly after he became the boss.

The imbroglio is growing. Mark Thompson, Mr Entwistle’s predecessor, who is due to start a new job as head of the New York Times next month, is under fire for failing to follow up on the “Newsnight” investigation into Savile, even though one journalist claims to have mentioned the matter to him. Mr Rippon has—in BBC parlance—already “stepped aside” after inaccuracies were revealed in an account of events posted on his blog. More senior executive scalps could follow.

All this is reminiscent of another crisis. A furious row over a report claiming that the government had deliberately overstated the case for war in Iraq resulted in Greg Dyke, then the BBC’s chief, resigning in 2004 after a stinging report by Lord Hutton, a senior judge. Bureaucratic rump-covering and editorial misjudgments have featured prominently in both cases.

No broadcaster worth its salt escapes scandals: they are the downside of dealing with tricky subjects. But the accretion of layers of management and rival fiefs inside the BBC—described by one news editor as “like the Vatican, just with more cardinals”—has emerged as a big problem. Mr Entwistle, for instance, was loth to pry into decisions which came within the remit of Helen Boaden, the director of news (and also a candidate for director-general).

The thick of it

Buck-passing tendencies are not limited to publicly funded broadcasting: just look at Rupert Murdoch’s News International, which long failed to admit to phone-hacking. The BBC however features an extra complication: it relies on the goodwill of governments to maintain a licence-fee settlement big enough to pay for its activities. Political jostling is thus rarely far away. The culture secretary, Maria Miller, has suggested that the BBC Trust, its governing body, should be more robust in pursuing critical inquiries into what has gone wrong. Lord Patten, the trust’s chairman, responded by telling the government to get its nose out of the independent broadcaster’s business.

Britons trust the BBC more than any other media outfit. Its breadth and the high standard of its best programmes make it a globally envied brand. The sudden revelation of so many flaws has been deeply damaging. The nation’s broadcaster could face long-running, costly claims from victims of abuse. From the height of so much esteem, it is a steep fall.