ITV honoured for Savile coverage (From Knutsford Guardian)

ITV honoured for Savile coverage

11:00am Thursday 21st February 2013 in National Entertainment News © Press Association 2013

ITV has won a handful of awards for its coverage of the Jimmy Savile sex scandal which sparked a major police investigation and plunged the BBC into crisis.

Its programme, Exposure: The Other Side Of Jimmy Savile, was named Scoop Of The Year at the Royal Television Society's Television Journalism Awards.

It also won the award for Home Current Affairs with the judges describing it as "a sensation without ever being sensationalist".

The documentary, presented by former detective Mark Williams-Thomas, featured contributions from several women describing their abuse at the hands of the DJ and presenter.

The former detective was originally part of a team looking at the story for the BBC's Newsnight, but that report was dropped leading to false allegations of a cover-up and a subsequent internal investigation that described the BBC as being riven by personal rivalries and in "chaos and confusion".

That decision and a subsequent botched investigation by Newsnight which falsely alleged former Conservative party chairman Lord McAlpine was a paedophile eventually led to the resignation of director general George Entwistle after just 54 days in the top job.

ITN's general coverage of the Savile story for ITV News picked up an award for Home News Coverage at Wednesday night's event at the London Hilton in Park Lane.

Channel 4 News was named Daily News Programme of the Year and its main presenter, Jon Snow, was named National Presenter of the Year.