Enlarge imageLONDON (Reuters) - BBC Director-General Mark Thompson has warned senior editors may be suspended in the scandal over public trust sparked off by rigged phone-in contests and the row over the Queen’s photo-shoot.
All BBC phone-in competitions have been suspended after an internal inquiry unearthed a string of fake winners in high-profile shows including "Comic Relief" and" Children in Need".
"We must swiftly put our house in order," said Thompson in a statement to staff. "Nothing matters more than trust and fair dealing with our audiences."
He said that in some cases senior editors will be suspended while reviews take place of why it took so long for incidents to come to light. Some date back to 2005.
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Thompson’s statement followed his report on the scandals to the BBC Trust, the overseeing body that replaced the old Board of Governors in the wake of the corporation’s last major scandal, the 2004 Hutton report on the death of Iraq arms expert David Kelly.
The trust said his report "shows further deeply disappointing evidence of insufficient understanding amongst certain staff of the standards of accuracy and honesty expected ..."
Earlier this month, the BBC was fined 50,000 pounds by regulator Ofcom for faking the results of a premium rate phone-in competition on children’s programme "Blue Peter".
Nearly 40,000 children had phoned the show last November in the hope of winning a toy but a technical fault meant no winning entrant could be chosen.
Instead, a child taking part in a visit to the studio was persuaded to pose as the winner and to say she was phoning from London.
The fine was paid by licence-payers.
More embarrassment followed when the BBC was forced to apologise to Queen Elizabeth for implying in a documentary trailer that she had stormed out of a photo-shoot with celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz.
Michael Grade, a former BBC chairman who is now chief executive of ITV, said: "It is clearly a cultural problem. It is clearly something that has grown and grown."
"If broadcasters are to have a future, that future lies in being trusted," he told Channel 4 News.
In a fiercely competitive market hunting for viewers, Grade said, "the problem is the pressure ... the temptation is greater than it has ever been to cross the line."
The phone-in problem has not just affected the BBC.
Ofcom said on Wednesday its inquiry into television programmes and quizzes that use premium rate telephone numbers had found that they frequently misled viewers.
"This inquiry shows the extent to which there has been a systemic failure of compliance," Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards said.
