 He called on the television industry to rediscover a sense of purpose.In November 2012, Paxman publicly defended George Entwistle after his resignation as Director-General of the BBC in connection with a "Newsnight" report which falsely implicated Lord McAlpine in the North Wales child abuse scandal.Paxman claimed Entwistle had been "brought low by cowards and incompetents" and criticised appointments of "biddable people" to the BBC in the wake of the Hutton Inquiry, as well as cuts to BBC programme budgets and bloated BBC management.