THE BBC is a national treasure. It can be brilliant and bombastic, excellent and exasperating, trendsetting and old-fashioned.

In my experience, many of its journalists are impossibly high-handed and self-important and believe they are in some way set apart from the rest of the media.

But it remains an organisation of which this country can be justifiably proud.

So it is hard to watch the corporation effectively eating itself alive over the Jimmy Savile scandal.

The BBC appears utterly rudderless and those with an axe to grind against it are having a field day.

This is the basic scenario. Savile has been exposed as a serial child abuser. Many of his offences were committed on BBC premises.

Police are investigating hundreds of complaints, some of which involve people who, unlike Savile, are still alive.

The BBC’s flagship Newsnight programme, meanwhile, was working on an investigation into allegations about Savile. Its editor, Peter Rippon, pulled the story.

ITV then broadcast the allegations in a programme of its own.

And all hell broke loose.

This week we have seen the BBC’s Panorama broadcast an investigation into Newsnight, which included an utterly bizarre coda in which the BBC refused to comment to the BBC about the BBC.

Rippon has been suspended. The Director General, George Entwistle, has been flayed alive after a terribly unconvincing performance before a committee of MPs.

Confused? You will be.

The BBC is in a horrible mess, much of it of its own making.

Yes, it is admirable that an organisation like the BBC can be seen to be investigating itself so thoroughly.

But there comes a point – and we have gone well beyond it – when such internal soul-searching becomes self-defeating.

I doubt if Entwistle will survive this scandal. He appears weak and not in control of his own organisation and that is usually fatal for any leader.

Other senior editorial heads will also roll.

But I strongly believe we all have to draw breath, take a step back and allow a few things to happen.

The two independent inquiries set up to look into the BBC’s conduct in relation to the Savile scandal must now be allowed to get on with their investigations.

The police must be allowed to continue with their probe – and, as I have said before, it should concentrate on potential criminality of the living.

Savile is dead. He cannot be prosecuted and he cannot answer any of the allegations. But those who are alleged to have conspired with him, or joined in his activities, need to be dealt with.

Those other than the BBC that are implicated in this scandal – the NHS and previous governments among them – must answer for their wrongdoings.

People like Paul Gambaccini need to put up or shut up. The broadcaster and others of his ilk are making ever-more serious claims about Savile while claiming they knew about his behaviour all along.

If that is the case, then they should hang their heads in shame for not having the courage to blow the whistle on Savile while he was alive so he could face justice.

Finally, the ridiculous hypocrisy of the national tabloids needs to be exposed.

BBC-haters like the Daily Mail are positively frothing at the mouth over this scandal.

They are pouring vitriol and scorn on the BBC for allowing Savile to get away with it for so long, conveniently ignoring the fact that national newspapers did exactly the same thing.

This is a scandal that is likely to continue to tear at the BBC for some time to come.

Questions have to be asked, answers have to be forthcoming, and truth has to be told.

But if the outcome of this is an irreversible dilution of our trust in the BBC then Britain will be a poorer place as a result.