(Tip o’ the pixel to the Missus)

Thursday’s New York Times featured this piece on page A8:

Britain Will Look at Why BBC Severance Payments Exceeded Contract Terms

LONDON — When it comes to the BBC and funding that is mostly provided by Britons who pay a fee to watch television, there is no end to the argument, or the accounting.

Next Monday, the fight will continue when the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee will hold new hearings on the way the British Broadcasting Corporation gave large severance payments to senior editors in an effort to reduce its budget.

The payments were made largely when Mark Thompson, now the president and chief executive of The New York Times Company, was the director general of the BBC. Mr. Thompson ran the BBC from 2004 to 2012.

 The piece goes on to say that Mr. Thompson “will testify at the hearings, which follow a June report and a report published Wednesday by the National Audit Office. The auditors found that between 2009 and December 2012, the BBC paid more severance than it was contractually obliged to give to 22 senior managers out of 150 who left, at a total extra cost of £1.4 million, or about $2.2 million.”

But, via the Times:

Mr. Thompson, who declined to be interviewed, said in a statement in July that he had received approval for the key severance payments from an executive remuneration committee and the BBC Trust, an oversight panel, which had been “fully informed in advance.”

So, to recap:

The New York Times is reporting on an investigation of the BBC (which Mr. Thompson ran at the time) by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (before which Mr. Thompson will testify), but, as the current CEO of the New York Times, Mr. Thompson will not give an interview to the New York Times.

Escher! thou shouldst be living at this hour: the Times hath need of thee . . .