Signature gatherers duel over Riordan pension initiative

Bonnie Haviland is the kind of voter Los Angeles city workers are hoping will help them stop former Mayor Richard Riordan's push to switch new employees into 401(k)-type retirement plans from the current taxpayer-backed pensions.

The Tarzana grandmother thinks younger generations shouldn't have to worry about a retirement tied to the ups and downs of the stock market. That's why Haviland, 72, refused Saturday to sign a petition seeking to put Riordan's pension measure before voters next May.

"I'm already retired so I don't have to worry," she said outside of a Vons supermarket, where a paid signature gatherer calling himself "Ace" had asked her to sign Riordan's petition. "But I feel sorry for those who do."

Riordan is in the midst of gathering about 265,000 signatures to qualify a pension initiative for the May mayoral election. Changes are needed because pension costs are projected to continue rising even with recent changes made to retirement benefits by the City Council, Riordan has said.

The city faces a $216-million budget shortfall next year, due in part to ever-increasing pension costs, city budget managers say. Union leaders say starting a 401(k)-like plan would cost the city even more, at least initially.

Saturday was the kickoff of organized labor's attempt to derail the former mayor and multimillionaire businessman's initiative drive. After a morning rally, about 100 city union members fanned out to 7-Elevens, supermarkets and strip malls across Los Angeles to persuade voters not to sign Riordan's petition.

"When there's trash to be picked up, who comes to your house to do it? Even on the day after Christmas?" asked Aurora Wynnz, a community activist whom everyone calls "McGee." "They don't get Social Security. And Riordan wants them all to get 401(k)s. How has that worked out for you?"

Wynnz appeared to be having great success. One person after another signed a sheet asking the city clerk to cancel out their signature for Riordan's measure just in case they had signed the petition without really knowing what it was about.

Tracy "Love" Williams was one of them. Stopped by Ace outside Vons, he signed one petition to get a medical marijuana ordinance on the ballot, and then signed a second one that Ace presented to him, he said. When Wynnz explained what the Riordan initiative would do, Williams was upset that he had signed it.

"How do I know you're not lying too?" Williams asked. After some more persuasion, he took the clipboard. "OK, I'll sign this too."

Jason Elias, a union spokesman, said overall activity was light Saturday, probably because of the wet weather.

Elias said that one of his members was pushed by a signature gatherer outside an Eagle Rock Trader Joe's and that he was spit on by the same man at another store. Union members were told not to be confrontational with the petition gatherers but to make a counter argument to voters being approached, he said.

The union didn't call the police, he said, because the man left. "We got what we wanted — he wasn't able to get any more signatures at that store."

John Schwada, a Riordan spokesman, said city workers can best protect their retirement benefits by joining the former mayor's movement. The current taxpayer-backed pension system is outdated and could bankrupt the city unless serious changes are made, he said.

"All the people of Los Angeles deserve an opportunity to vote on an issue of such great importance to the city's future," Riordan said in a statement.

catherine.saillant@latimes.com

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Israel Sticks to Tough Approach in Conflict With Hamas

TEL AVIV — With rockets landing on the outskirts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Friday and the Egyptian prime minister making a solidarity visit to Gaza, the accelerating conflict between Israel and Hamas — reminiscent in many ways of so many previous battles — has the makings of a new kind of Israeli-Palestinian face-off.

The combination of longer-range and far deadlier rockets in the hands of more radicalized Palestinians, the arrival in Gaza and Sinai from North Africa of other militants pressuring Hamas to fight more, and the growing tide of anti-Israel fury in a region where authoritarian rulers have been replaced by Islamists means that Israel is engaging in this conflict with a different set of challenges.

The Middle East of 2012 is not what it was in late 2008, the last time Israel mounted a military invasion to reduce the rocket threat from Gaza. Many analysts and diplomats outside Israel say the country today needs a different approach to Hamas and the Palestinians based more on acknowledging historic grievances and shifting alliances.

“As long as the crime of dispossession and refugeehood that was committed against the Palestinian people in 1947-48 is not redressed through a peaceful and just negotiation that satisfies the legitimate rights of both sides, we will continue to see enhancements in both the determination and the capabilities of Palestinian fighters — as has been the case since the 1930s, in fact,” Rami G. Khouri, a professor at the American University of Beirut, wrote in an online column. “Only stupid or ideologically maniacal Zionists fail to come to terms with this fact.”

But the government in Israel and the vast majority of its people have drawn a very different conclusion. Their dangerous neighborhood is growing still more dangerous, they agree. That means not concessions, but being tougher in pursuit of deterrence, and abandoning illusions that a Jewish state will ever be broadly accepted here.

“There is a theory, which I believe, that Hamas doesn’t want a peaceful solution and only wants to keep the conflict going forever until somehow in their dream they will have all of Israel,” Eitan Ben Eliyahu, a former leader of the Israeli Air Force, said in a telephone briefing. “There is a good chance we will go into Gaza on the ground again.”

What is striking in listening to the Israelis discuss their predicament is how similar the debate sounds to so many previous ones, despite the changed geopolitical circumstances. In most minds here, the changes do not demand a new strategy, simply a redoubled old one.

The operative metaphor is often described as “cutting the grass,” meaning a task that must be performed regularly and has no end. There is no solution to security challenges, officials here say, only delays and deterrence. That is why the idea of one day attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, even though such an attack would set the nuclear program back only two years, is widely discussed as a reasonable option. That is why frequent raids in the West Bank and surveillance flights over Lebanon never stop.

And that is why this week’s operation in Gaza is widely viewed as having been inevitable, another painful but necessary maintenance operation that, officials here say, will doubtless not be the last.

There are also those who believe that the regional upheavals are improving Israel’s ability to carry out deterrence. One retired general who remains close to the military and who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that with Syria torn apart by civil war, Hezbollah in Lebanon discredited because of its support for the Syrian government, and Egypt so weakened economically, Israel should not worry about anything but protecting its civilians.

“Should we let our civilians be bombed because the Arab world is in trouble?” he asked.

So much was happening elsewhere in the region — the Egyptian and Libyan revolutions, the Syrian civil war, dramatic changes in Yemen and elections in Tunisia — that a few rockets a day that sent tens of thousands of Israeli civilians into bomb shelters drew little attention. But in the Israeli view, the necessity of a Gaza operation has been growing steadily throughout the Arab Spring turmoil.

In 2009, after the Israeli invasion pushed Hamas back and killed about 1,400 people in Gaza, 200 rockets hit Israel. The same was true in 2010. But last year the number rose to 600, and before this week the number this year was 700, according to the Israeli military. The problem went beyond rockets to mines planted near the border aimed at Israeli military jeeps and the digging of explosive-filled tunnels.

“In 2008 we managed to minimize rocket fire from Gaza significantly,” said Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, a military spokeswoman. “We started that year with 100 rockets a week and ended it with two a week. We were able to give people in our south two to three years. But the grass has grown, and other things have as well. Different jihadist ideologies have found their way into Gaza, including quite a few terrorist organizations. More weapons have come in, including the Fajr-5, which is Iranian made and can hit Tel Aviv. That puts nearly our entire population in range. So we reached a point where we cannot act with restraint any longer.”

Gazans see events in a very different light. The problem, they say, comes from Israel: Israeli drones fill the Gazan skies, Israeli gunboats strafe their waters, Palestinian militants are shot at from the air, and the Gaza border areas are declared off limits by Israel with the risk of death from Israeli gunfire.

But there is little dissent in Israel about the Gaza policy. This week leaders of the leftist opposition praised the assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari, the Hamas military commander, on Wednesday. He is viewed here as the equivalent of Osama bin Laden. The operation could go on for many days before there is any real dissent.

The question here, nonetheless, is whether the changed regional circumstances will make it harder to “cut the grass” in Gaza this time and get out. A former top official who was actively involved in the last Gaza war and who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it looked to him as if Hamas would not back down as easily this time.

“They will not stop until enough Israelis are killed or injured to create a sense of equality or balance,” he said. “If a rocket falls in the middle of Tel Aviv, that will be a major success. But this government will go back at them hard. I don’t see this ending in the next day or two.”

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It's a Girl for Chad Lowe

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

11/17/2012 at 12:20 AM ET

Chelsea Lauren/WireImage

It’s a girl for Chad Lowe.

The Pretty Little Liars star and wife Kim welcomed their second daughter on Thursday, Nov. 15, the actor announced via Twitter.

“It’s a girl!!! And she’s as beautiful as her mommy and [3½-year-old] big sister Mabel,” Lowe, 44, writes. “We are blessed!”

The couple, who married in August 2010, announced the pregnancy in June.

“I’m trying to bank some sleeping hours, which is a little tough,” Lowe joked to PEOPLE last Saturday, sharing that his wife was due to deliver this week.

– Sarah Michaud

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

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GOP strategist launches super PAC in L.A. mayor's race

Looking to dramatically tip the scales in the race for Los Angeles' next mayor, a nationally prominent Republican media strategist has formed a "super PAC" that aims to spend millions of dollars to elect dark-horse mayoral candidate Kevin James.

Fred Davis, a GOP advertising man who has worked on campaigns for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, U.S. Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina and former President George W. Bush, said the Better Way LA committee has raised nearly $500,000 on behalf of James and plans to collect at least $3.5 million more.

The PAC is the first outside committee to form on behalf of a mayoral candidate in the March 5 election. Davis, who lives in Hollywood, said a victory for James, a former prosecutor who is both gay and Republican, could ignite a "rebirth" of the GOP in California, where Democrats hold two-thirds of the seats in the Legislature, and Republican voter registration has fallen below 30%.

Since the campaign began, James has struggled to raise the big money needed to carry his message on 30-second television ads and multiple glossy mailings. Davis said he would even the playing field by putting the blame for the city's financial crisis on the other three leading candidates — City Controller Wendy Greuel and City Council members Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry — and identifying James as "the only one capable" of fixing the city.

"He's the only one of the four who wasn't part of the problem," said Davis, chairman of Better Way LA, which filed formation papers with the city Ethics Commission last week.

Los Angeles campaign finance rules prohibit citywide candidates from receiving more than $1,300 from each donor during an election cycle. But independent expenditure committees such as Better Way LA can spend as much as they want on a candidate's behalf, a practice used for years in city elections by the public employee unions and, to a lesser degree, business groups.

"There's no real definition for a super PAC," said Bob Stern, a state government expert who helped draft the city's campaign finance law. "They're basically called that because they're not connected with the candidate and raising lots of money. That's the super part."

Whether Davis' role in the mayor's race will trigger a Republican rebirth is far from clear. Just 16.3% of voters in Los Angeles are registered with the GOP, less than one-third the number who identify themselves as Democrats, according to figures provided by the registrar-recorder/county clerk.

Davis said a second organization, Fix It LA, has been assembled as a nonprofit 501(c)4 advocacy group in case there are donors who want to help James get elected without having their identities revealed.

James, for his part, said he was thrilled that Davis is "excited" about his campaign but did not know of the details. "If private citizens want to step up and support my campaign, or … get involved in this race, I'm willing to have any kind of support that's willing to come my way," he said.

For weeks, James has marketed himself as the mayoral campaign's only true outsider. Appearing at a candidate forum Wednesday, he said Perry, Garcetti and Greuel — all city elected officials for more than a decade — should not be rewarded with a promotion given the city's service cuts and ongoing financial crisis.

Those arguments have not translated into financial firepower. By Sept. 30, Greuel and Garcetti had each raised 10 times as much as James, who had collected $275,000, according to campaign finance reports. Perry, who has raised $1.3 million, said recent elections have shown that money doesn't necessarily decide the outcome.

"If that were the case, Jackie Lacey wouldn't be the district attorney now," she said. "I can think of many examples — Meg Whitman, Al Checchi — but Jackie is only the most recent."

Rose Kapolczynski, senior advisor to Greuel's campaign, offered a similar message, saying GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's super PACs "showed that you can spend millions in secret funds and still not guarantee victory on election day."

Better Way LA could draw attention to James for reasons that have nothing to do with City Hall. Davis drew fire earlier this year for pitching a commercial against President Obama that, had it aired, would have exploited the Democrat's ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Davis also took heat for a campaign ad in Michigan that depicted a Chinese woman speaking broken English and talking about jobs that had been exported to China. Davis, 60, dismissed that criticism, saying "people are more concerned about winning than the press on a couple ads."

Davis said he met James after giving an address in Culver City in July. They wound up speaking for two hours about "elections and how you get elected," he said. Soon afterward, Davis called other like-minded business people about forming Better Way LA, he said.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

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Israel and Hamas Step Up Air Attacks in Gaza Clash

Wissam Nassar for The New York Times

The Gaza City funeral on Thursday of Ahmed al-Jabari, the Hamas military commander, killed in an Israeli attack. More Photos »

KIRYAT MALACHI, Israel — Israel and Hamas brushed aside international calls for restraint on Thursday and escalated their lethal conflict over Gaza, where Palestinian militants launched hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory, targeting Tel Aviv for the first time, and Israel intensified its aerial assaults and sent armored vehicles rumbling toward the Gaza border for a possible invasion.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak of Israel, expressing outrage over a pair of long-range Palestinian rockets that whizzed toward Tel Aviv and set off the first air-raid warning in the Israeli metropolis since it was threatened by Iraqi Scuds in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, said, “There will be a price for that escalation that the other side will have to pay.”

He authorized the call-up of 30,000 army reservists if needed, another sign that Israel was preparing to invade Gaza for the second time in four years to crush what it considers an unacceptable security threat from smuggled rockets amassed by Hamas, the militant Islamist group that governs the isolated coastal enclave and does not recognize Israel’s right to exist.

It was not clear whether the show of Israeli force on the ground in fact portended an invasion or was meant as more of an intimidation tactic to further pressure Hamas leaders, who had all been forced into hiding on Wednesday after the Israelis killed the group’s military chief, Ahmed al-Jabari, in a pinpoint aerial bombing. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he was prepared to “take whatever action is necessary.”

Tel Aviv was not hit on Thursday. One rocket crashed into the sea off its coast and another apparently fell, the ability of militants 40 miles away to fire those weapons at the city of 400,000 underscored, in the Israeli government’s view, the justification for the intensive aerial assaults on hundreds of suspected rocket storage sites and other targets in Gaza.

Health officials in Gaza said at least 19 people, including five children and a pregnant teenager, had been killed over two days of nearly nonstop aerial attacks by Israel, and dozens had been wounded. Three Israelis were killed on Thursday in Kiryat Malachi, this small southern Israeli town, when a rocket fired from Gaza struck their apartment house.

In a sign of solidarity with Hamas as well as a diplomatic move to ease the crisis, President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt ordered his prime minister to lead a delegation to Gaza on Friday. In another diplomatic signal, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, also planned to visit Jerusalem, Cairo and Ramallah, the West Bank headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, in coming days.

In Washington, Obama administration officials said they had asked friendly Arab countries with ties to Hamas, which the United States and Israel regard as a terrorist group, to use their influence to seek a way to defuse the hostilities. At the same time, however, a State Department spokesman, Mark C. Toner, reiterated to reporters the American position that Israel had a right to defend itself from the rocket fire and that the “onus was on Hamas” to stop it.

The Pentagon said late Thursday that Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta spoke to Mr. Barak this week about Israeli operations in and around Gaza and condemned the violence carried out by Hamas and other groups against Israel.

There was no sign that either side was prepared, at least not yet, to restore the uneasy truce that was forged the last time the Israelis invaded Gaza in the winter of 2008-9, a three-week war that left 1,400 Palestinians dead and drew widespread international condemnation.

Denunciations of Israel for what critics called a renewal of its aggressive and disproportionate attacks spread quickly on the second day of the aerial assaults. The biggest criticism came from the 120-nation Nonaligned Movement, the largest bloc at the United Nations. In a statement released by Iran, which holds the group’s rotating presidency and is one of Israel’s most ardent foes, the group said: “Israel, the occupying power, is, once more, escalating its military campaign against the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip.” The group made no mention of the Palestinian rocket fire aimed at Israel but condemned “this act of aggression by the Israelis and their resort to force against the defenseless people” and demanded “decisive action by the U.N. Security Council.”

Isabel Kershner reported from Kiryat Malachi, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram from Gaza, Mayy El Sheikh and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo, Alan Cowell from Paris and Elisabeth Bumiller from Bangkok.

Isabel Kershner reported from Kiryat Malachi, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram from Gaza, Rina Castelnuovo from Kiryat Malachi, Mayy El Sheikh and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo, Gabby Sobelman from Jerusalem, Alan Cowell from Paris and Elisabeth Bumiller from Bangkok.

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The X Factor Reveals Its Top 12

TV Watch

The X Factor

11/15/2012 at 11:00 PM EST

Demi Lovato and Simon Cowell

Double elimination time on The X Factor!

The top 12 performed songs by divas the night before – and then faced a night of diva-worthy drama on Thursday's show. And it was a particularly tough night for the young adults' coach, Demi Lovato, after the outcome of the viewers' votes were revealed.

Keep reading for all the results ...

Early in the hour, hosts Mario Lopez and Khloé Kardashian announced the act with the lowest number of votes was Simon Cowell's hip-hop group Lyric 145, who performed a mash-up of Queen's "We Will Rock You" and Katy Perry's "E.T." on Wednesday.

"We didn't get the opportunity to show what we really had," frontwoman Lyric Da Queen said. "We hard original lyrics ... But we're just taking the good with the bad right now."

Nine acts were then declared safe, leaving two to sing for survival – and they were both from Demi's team: Jennel Garcia and Paige Thomas.

Jennel performed an emotional rendition of Hoobastank's "The Reason," and Paige sang Coldplay's "Paradise."

Then the judges had to vote for the act they wanted to send home.

"I'm shocked that either of them are at the bottom," L.A. Reid said. He voted to send home Jennel. Britney followed his lead. Simon refused to say his choice and forced Demi to go first. "The act that I'm going to send home is Paige," she said. It was up to Simon to avoid a tie – and he picked Jennel.

So, Demi was the only one to reject Paige and she'll have to work with her again next week. Awkward!

"You're so unbelievably talented and you have a future ahead of you so I'm not worried," Demi told Jennel. "I love you and I really, really believe in you."

And then the co-hosts announced the ranking of the top 10 based on who got the most votes:

10. Paige Thomas
9. Arin Ray
8. Beatrice Miller
7. Diamond White
6. Fifth Harmony
5. CeCe Frey
4. Emblem3
3. Vino Alan
2. Carly Rose Sonenclar
1. Tate Stevens

The show's only country singer does it again!

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Diabetes rates rocket in Oklahoma, South

NEW YORK (AP) — The nation's diabetes problem is getting worse, and the biggest jump over 15 years was in Oklahoma, according to a new federal report issued Thursday.

The diabetes rate in Oklahoma more than tripled, and Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama also saw dramatic increases since 1995, the study showed.

The South's growing weight problem is the main explanation, said Linda Geiss, lead author of the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.

"The rise in diabetes has really gone hand in hand with the rise in obesity," she said.

Bolstering the numbers is the fact that more people with diabetes are living longer because better treatments are available.

The disease exploded in the United States in the last 50 years, with the vast majority from obesity-related Type 2 diabetes. In 1958, fewer than 1 in 100 Americans had been diagnosed with diabetes. In 2010, it was about 1 in 14.

Most of the increase has happened since 1990.

Diabetes is a disease in which the body has trouble processing sugar; it's the nation's seventh leading cause of death. Complications include poor circulation, heart and kidney problems and nerve damage.

The new study is the CDC's first in more than a decade to look at how the nationwide boom has played out in different states.

It's based on telephone surveys of at least 1,000 adults in each state in 1995 and 2010. Participants were asked if a doctor had ever told them they have diabetes.

Not surprisingly, Mississippi — the state with the largest proportion of residents who are obese — has the highest diabetes rate. Nearly 12 percent of Mississippians say they have diabetes, compared to the national average of 7 percent.

But the most dramatic increases in diabetes occurred largely elsewhere in the South and in the Southwest, where rates tripled or more than doubled. Oklahoma's rate rose to about 10 percent, Kentucky went to more than 9 percent, Georgia to 10 percent and Alabama surpassed 11 percent.

An official with Oklahoma State Department of Health said the solution is healthier eating, more exercise and no smoking.

"And that's it in a nutshell," said Rita Reeves, diabetes prevention coordinator.

Several Northern states saw rates more than double, too, including Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Maine.

The study was published in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

___

Associated Press writer Ken Miller in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

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Online:

CDC report: http://tinyurl.com/cdcdiabetesreport

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UC Regents request funds to reboot projects

SAN FRANCISCO — Two UC campuses received important endorsements Thursday for long-stalled projects: a new medical school at Riverside and a major classroom building at Merced.

The UC regents included a proposed $15 million to help run the medical school and $45 million for the Merced building in their 2013-14 budget request to the governor and Legislature. The regents said they were more optimistic than in the past about their chances since state tax revenues are improving.

Meanwhile, about 60 student protesters — demanding that any new UC revenue be used to freeze tuition or roll it back — blocked an intersection for several hours near the UC San Francisco facility where the regents were meeting. One person was cited for vandalism after allegedly banging and damaging a car trying to get past, according to San Francisco police.

Inside the meeting, a dozen chanting protesters briefly disrupted the regents' discussion. They were escorted out by police without arrests.

UC Santa Cruz freshman Jeanne Baldzikowski said she regretted skipping school for the street rally "knowing I'm paying for the classes, but maybe I will have to skip a lot of classes in the future if I can't afford them."

Last year, national accreditors refused to allow the UC Riverside medical school to open because it lacked state funding. But the accrediting agency reversed itself last month and granted preliminary approval after Riverside administrators garnered $100 million in private and public money. The school, which is to enroll its first 50 students next summer, will need about $15 million extra annually from the state to expand and win full accreditation, UC officials said.

The youngest among UC's 10 campuses, 7-year-old UC Merced, said the lecture hall building will increase overall classroom space by 50% and help enrollment grow from its current 5,700 to 10,000 by the decade's end. With a room shortage, increasing numbers of classes are taught as early as 7:30 a.m. or after 9 p.m. Funding was denied in past years but the outlook improved recently after Gov. Jerry Brown approved $4.7 million for its design and planning; now the request for construction will be on Brown's desk.

State financing for the Merced building is "absolutely our highest priority for construction," said Patrick Lenz, the UC system's vice president for budget and capital resources. In all, UC is seeking $788 million in state funding for 39 projects, including some renovations and seismic improvements.

The regents also approved an agreement for UC Davis Medical Center to help run the 202-bed Dameron Hospital in Stockton and took preliminary steps to help boost income from UC patents and investments in start-up firms based on UC faculty members' inventions.

larry.gordon@latimes.com

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BBC Failures Show Limits of Guidelines

LONDON — It was 2004, and the British Broadcasting Corporation was gripped by a crisis over journalistic standards that had led to Parliamentary hearings, public recrimination and the resignations of its two top officials. Vowing change, the corporation established elaborate bureaucratic procedures that placed more formal responsibility for delicate decisions in the hands not of individual managers, but of rigid hierarchies.

The corporation also appointed a deputy director general in charge of news operations; established a “journalism board” to monitor editorial policy; issued numerous new guidelines on journalistic procedures; and put an increasing emphasis on “compliance” — a system in which managers are required to file cumbersome forms flagging dozens of potential trouble spots, from bad language to “disturbing content” like exorcism or beheadings, in every program taped for broadcast.

More crises would follow — the history of the BBC can be measured out in crises — and with each new one, the management team under Mark Thompson, director general from 2004 through mid-September 2012, added more guidelines and put more emphasis on form-filling and safety checks in news and entertainment programs. An organization already known for its bureaucracy became even more unwieldy (the editorial guidelines are now 215 pages long).

But it is these very structures that seem to have failed the BBC in the most recent scandal, in which its news division first canceled a child abuse segment it should have broadcast, and later broadcast one it should have canceled. In the first instance, it appears that people overseeing the program were too cautious, so that top managers were left unaware of its existence; in the second, managers may have relied too much on rigid procedures at the expense of basic journalistic principles.

“They burned their fingers,” said Tim Luckhurst, a journalism professor at the University of Kent who worked at the BBC for 10 years. “They wanted systems that could take responsibility instead of people.”

The recent scandal has had a number of immediate results. Mr. Thompson’s successor as director general, George Entwistle, resigned after just 54 days on the job. (Mr. Thompson is now president and chief executive of The New York Times Company.) Outside investigators were appointed to interrogate BBC employees in at least three different inquiries. A number of lower- and midlevel managers had to withdraw temporarily from their jobs and, facing possible disciplinary action, hired lawyers. And, once again, the BBC is talking about reorganizing structures.

Through a spokesman, Mr. Entwistle declined to comment on the scandal or the BBC’s management practices, saying he was “not doing any media interviews at present.” Mr. Thompson also declined to comment.

But Mr. Entwistle’s temporary successor, Tim Davie, who had previously been director of BBC Audio & Music, acknowledged that changes had to be made. “If the public are going to get journalism they trust from the BBC I have to be, as director general, very clear on who’s running the news operation and ensuring that journalism that we put out passes muster,” Mr. Davie said in his first week on the job. The first thing to do, he said, was to “take action and build trust by putting a clear line of command in.”

This is a complicated scandal in two parts. The first part was over the BBC’s decision last December not to broadcast a report saying that Jimmy Savile, a longtime BBC television host, had been a serial child molester, and instead to broadcast several glowing tributes to his career. The second part was its decision on Nov. 2 to accuse a member of Margaret Thatcher’s government of being a pedophile, an accusation that turned out to be patently false.

But both exposed the problems in a system that seems to insulate the BBC’s director general — who is also the editor in chief — from knowledge of basic issues like what potentially contentious programs are scheduled for broadcast. And both decisions were the result, it seems, of a system that failed in practice, even as it was correctly followed in theory.

Ben Bradshaw, a former BBC correspondent and now a Labour member of Parliament, said the 2004 scandal, touched off by reporting about British intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, had created a system based on “fear and anxiety.” The BBC, he added, became “even more bureaucratic and had even more layers, which exacerbated the problem of buck passing and no one being able to take a decision.”

Speaking of the Nov. 2 broadcast, the chairman of the BBC Trust, Chris Patten, said in a television interview that the piece went through “every damned layer of BBC management bureaucracy, legal checks” without anyone raising any serious objections.

Matthew Purdy contributed reporting from New York, and Lark Turner from London.

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