Quintin Jardine's blog

Anyone else feel that Jermaine Jenas has been brutally treated by the BBC?

Having been subjected, apparently, to trial by Zoom, while on holiday with his family, he was sacked with full-on publicity while on air with a rival radio station.

Jenas admits that the messages he sent were ‘inappropriate but not illegal’ although their content has been withheld and the recipients have not commented. Let’s assume they were sackable. Let’s assume that he is a seedy little creep.

Does that justify the media crucifixion that the BBC HR department must have known would follow its cack-handed announcement of a matter that could have been handled privately?

I am left feeling that to an extent the guy is a victim himself, of the BBC’s determination to restore its reputation in the wake of Huw Edwards and the Strictly bullying scandal.

This is the organisation that employed and aggrandised Jimmy Savile for forty-odd years. Has that uncomfortable truth influenced its treatment of this case?

Whatever it’s as bad an example of crisis management as I have ever seen.