10 November 2012 Last updated at 04:28 ET

Entwistle says BBC wrong on Newsnight abuse report

The apology statement read out at the start of the programme

A BBC Newsnight report in which an abuse victim accused a former Tory politician of sex abuse should not have been broadcast, BBC director general George Entwistle says.

He gave an unreserved apology to Lord McAlpine after it wrongly implicated him in abuse at care homes in Wales.

Mr Entwistle, the BBC's editor-in-chief, said he was not aware of the episode until after it was broadcast.

An internal investigation is under way into what went wrong.

The abuse victim, Steve Messham, apologised to Lord McAlpine, a former Tory treasurer during Margaret Thatcher's leadership, after saying he did not assault him.

Newsnight had reported Mr Messham's claims against a leading 1980s Tory politician but did not name him.

'Totally unacceptable'

Mr Entwistle, speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme a day after the apology, said: "We should not have put out a film that was so fundamentally wrong. What happened here is so totally unacceptable. In my view the film should not have gone out".

He has commissioned a report from BBC Scotland director Ken MacQuarrie into what happened with the Newsnight investigation, and expects it see it on Sunday.

"This was a piece of journalism referred to senior figures within News, referred up to the level of the management board and had appropriate attention from the lawyers," Mr Entwistle said.

"The question is, in spite of all that, why did it go wrong? Something definitely went wrong, something definitely and clearly and unambiguously went wrong."

Asked if he should have been aware of it as he is the editor-in-chief, he said "not every piece of journalism made inside the BBC is referred to the editor-in-chief".

Source : bbc[dot]co[dot]uk