Three British institutions have felt the devastation of a perfect reputational storm in recent weeks. Two scandals have undermined public confidence in the BBC, the first involving faking winners of phone-in competitions and the second over the misleading edit of a film in which the Queen is shown storming off camera after cross words with a portrait photographer. Customer complaints, baggage loss, and industrial action have been compounded by a price-fixing scandal at British Airways that has left the airline with a £270m fine and a £300m class action suit. Finally, London’s Metropolitan Police, already in the dock for heavy-handed tactics with terrorist suspects, has been exposed for misleading the public over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician who was mistaken for a suicide bomber in 2005.
What these cases show is the extent to which the leaders and senior executives of these organizations were adrift. They were exposed for being unaware of what was happening both within and outside their organizations. Sir Ian Blair, head of the Met, was dubbed "The Sleeping Policeman" for admitting that even after 24 hours, no one had informed him that an innocent man had been killed. Willie Walsh, CEO of BA, shamefacedly admitted he had known nothing of his company’s price-fixing activities, which had occurred in 2004, a year before he joined the airline. Meanwhile, Peter Fincham, controller of BBC ONE, was forced into a groveling apology after the Queen demanded the film be scrapped.
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