The rights and wrongs of the affair matter less to BBC management than the consequences. After the official inquiry into Dr Kelly's death, the director-general had to resign. Ten years on, another director-general resigned because Newsnight failed to investigate the abuse of children by Jimmy Savile and then broadcast ludicrous allegations that a senior political figure was an abuser.

If honourable newspaper editors get a story wrong, they apologise. If they are in the right, but the government of the day or an interest group does not like what they have published, they tell the government or interest group to "go away" or perhaps use stronger language. Because the BBC is funded by the state and forces every household to contribute to its budget, however, it collapses under pressure, leaving its managers buried beneath the rubble.

The loss of two director-generals in a decade has incubated a frightened culture. You can tell that BBC journalists are ashamed of it by their pretence that stories "emerge". I hope Tony Hall, the new Director-General, finds the courage to allow a better BBC journalism to "emerge" in its place. As the money flows out of privately-funded media, the BBC will soon be one of the few organisations with the funds to pursue investigative journalism. All it needs is for its conservative critics to get off its back and for its managers to find their backbones.