As Mark Thompson Starts New Job, the BBC\'s Implosion Is Felt in New York

When Mark Thompson started his job on Monday as president and chief executive of The New York Times Company, a British television network was there to capture the moment.

Responding to a shouted question, Mr. Thompson stopped briefly, standing under The Times's logo, to say on camera that he's very saddened by the events at the BBC, which is imploding in the aftermath of a child sex-abuse scandal and cover-up. And he repeated that nothing that has happened there, where he was director general and editor in chief, for the past eight years, should have an impact on his mission at The New York Times.

I wrote on this topic on Oct. 23, urging The Times to report aggressively on Mr. Thompson's role in the BBC's troubles. On Oct. 25, I noted that such an effort was already under way. Times top editors had sent Matthew Purdy, the head of The Times's investigative reporting team, to London to join the efforts of bureau reporters there and media reporters in New York.

Since that time, more than a dozen staff-written articles have appeared in The Times, most notably one by Mr. Purdy on Nov. 5 on the Business Day front, with the headline “As Scandal Flared, BBC's Leaders Missed Red Flags.”

I've been reading them carefully, as I have everything on this subject from other news organizations. Although Mr. Thompson's role is on the business side of The Times, his tenure here cannot help but have a profound, if indirect, effect on its journalism.

My conclusion is that The Times has pulled no punches in reporting on Mr. Thompson's role and on the wider BBC story. And that's not always easy.

I asked Mr. Purdy about the difficulties of reporting on a story that involves one's own employer. He said:

Obviously there are all sorts of potential sensitivities and complications when writing about your own company. And this story had an extra level of complication since it was a bout events that happened elsewhere but involved our incoming C.E.O. But I put all that aside and reported it like any other story. I did not see it as an internal investigation, since the Jimmy Savile case didn't happen at The Times, or The Times's official take on Mark Thompson, but as a story that tried to explored what Thompson did or didn't do as the Savile scandal unfolded and also to put it in the context of his time as director general of the BBC.

Mr. Purdy told me that there was “a lot of interest” from top editors like Jill Abramson and Dean Baquet but “no interference.” Mr. Purdy declined to comment on whether his reporting is concluded, but said The Times is clearly continuing to cover the events at the BBC.

What was turned up? Nothing close to a smoking gun â€" certainly no evidence or even a hint that Mr. Thompson pulled the plug on or covered up an investigation.

Most notable were two conclusions:

â€" That, as ed itor in chief, as well as director general â€" Mr. Thompson probably should have known what was happening within his organization, and that he had multiple opportunities to gain that knowledge. A Times story that appeared in the Oct. 25 print edition quoted a former BBC producer and current member of Parliament, Roger Gale, saying that Mr. Thompson was well paid “to, apparently, not know what was going on under his own roof.”

â€" That Mr. Thompson's depiction of when and how he learned about the “NewsNight” investigation has “evolved.” That is, he started out saying he had no knowledge about a pulled NewsNight investigation of claims about Mr. Savile's child abuse; he later said that he had heard something about it, but never pursued deeper knowledge of it.

I asked The Times's publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., on Monday if he believed his newspaper had reported thoroughly and well on Mr. Thompson.

“Absolutely,” he wrote in an e-mail. “ Mark thinks so, too, by the way.”

Nothing in that reporting changed his mind; his support for Mr. Thompson has not wavered and continued in an e-mail to Times staff members Monday.

Mr. Sulzberger wrote:

We welcome him at a time of tremendous change and challenge, which must be met with equal focus and innovation. Mark will lead us as we continue our digital transformation, bolster our international growth, drive our productivity and introduce new technologies that will help us become better storytellers and enrich the experience for our readers and viewers. That is what he did as director general of the BBC.

The challenges at The Times are very real, as they are throughout journalism. Failing to meet them could damage one of the world's great news organizations at a critical time. It's safe to say that everyone here â€" from The Times's board of directors to the mail clerks - hopes that Mr. Sulzberger's faith in Mr. Thomp son will be rewarded.

But here's the twist: The same global and digital media explosion that Mr. Thompson must lead has conspired to shrink the universe. Even as Mr. Thompson came to work, a headline on The Times's home page described those he left behind: “BBC Fallout Spreads as More Executives Step Aside.”

The world is smaller now. What happens in London reverberates in New York. And the chaos at the BBC â€" in which many of the people Mr. Thompson has supervised stepped aside as recently as this past weekend - feels uncomfortably close to home.