On the surface, things look rosy for Mark Thompson, the CEO and President of the New York Times.
According to recently released company accounts he received a salary package worth $8.7 million in 2015, approximately doubling his earnings for the previous year.
The British media executive, who began working at the Times three-and-a-half years ago, collected the eye-watering sum in the form of standard base pay of $1 million; $5 million in stock awards; and a non-equity incentive plan of $2.6 million.
Nice work if you can get it.
But now he has been accused of presiding over “an environment rife with discrimination based on age, race and gender” by two employees of the New York Times.
Most inconveniently, in court papers filed in New York by the employees in this civil case, the two plaintiffs cite the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal, which Thompson was accused of “seemingly [being] involved in attempting to conceal” when he worked at the BBC, as one example of their concerns about him.
I can provide an insight into this chapter of Thompson’s career having spoken to him about it for several minutes in the street.
Thompson ran the BBC between 2004 and September 2012.
Savile, who died aged 84 in October 2011, was a DJ and TV presenter who is believed to have been one of the most prolific sex offenders in British history. He worked for the BBC from the 1960s until the 1990s and is now known to have molested several children on its premises in London.
Through chicanery, skulduggery, intimidation and luck Savile went to his grave having escaped scrutiny for his terrible acts.
The case has become a byword for public outrage and helped to trigger soul searching on a national scale about child sex abuse.
Thompson’s place in this is simple but serious: did he ever conceal his awareness of Savile’s alleged crimes before he stepped down as BBC chief in September 2012?
Back in 2011 two journalists who worked on BBC TV show Newsnight painstakingly investigated Savile for weeks immediately after his death. They traced several women who told them on camera about the abuse the DJ inflicted on them in the 1970s when they were teenagers, sometimes on BBC premises. At least one was a child.
Their stories matched perfectly. There was no risk of being sued because Savile was dead. The public interest was overwhelming.
But BBC bosses, perhaps mindful of Savile’s hitherto important place in BBC history, appeared to panic and buried the story.
A few days before Christmas in 2011 I received a tip-off that Newsnight’s Savile investigation had been spiked in mysterious circumstances.
I asked the BBC press office about it at the time. They provided a mealy-mouthed statement neither confirming nor denying what they knew about Savile.
I had been fobbed off.
I then heard that at a BBC Christmas drinks party a BBC reporter had tackled Thompson – in front of other guests – about Newsnight’s Savile investigation having been spiked.
I also knew the Savile situation was about to get worse because the BBC decided that, having shelved Newsnight’s Savile investigation, it was still going to air long-planned tribute programmes to Savile on TV and radio over Christmas.
It then did so, heaping praise on him even though some bosses knew the vile reality about him.
The BBC wilfully misled the public in the worst way imaginable.
But what did Thompson know?
Crucially, senior BBC executive Helen Boaden has subsequently confirmed in writing to a committee of MPs that she told Thompson before these tribute programmes were broadcast about Newsnight’s investigation of Savile.
Boaden has provided a detailed written account of this conversation, stating that Thompson rang her a few days before Christmas 2011 while he was in Manchester and she was in London to discuss Newsnight’s story.
So – according to one of the BBC’s own senior bosses, Thompson knew of the allegations against Savile but was happy to go along with the idea that he was a saint anyway.
The police should have been told and there should have been an internal inquiry.
None of this happened.
The BBC, terrified of the truth emerging, spent the next nine months pretending it knew nothing about Savile’s foul deeds.
I know this because I spent months pursuing Thompson over it by ringing his office and making Freedom of Information requests.
I also published a story about it in a magazine in February 2012, stating that “Mark Thompson cannot claim to be ignorant” of the allegations against Savile.
The article was immediately repeated by other media outlets, including the Daily Telegraph.
Remember, these article appeared seven months before Thompson left the BBC to work at the New York Times.
Apparently, Thompson didn’t read any of these articles.
Thompson has always denied hearing any allegations against Savile while he ran the BBC between 2004 and September 2012.
Yet Helen Boaden disputes this.
Who is right and who is wrong?
Perhaps the truth will finally emerge in a New York court, thanks to the papers filed there this month.