The BBC’s coverage of their suspended star is a mistake

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A statue of George Orwell greets those visiting the BBC’s home at Broadcasting House in central London, along with an inspiring inscription from the unpublished preface to Animal Farm. But it is the bending of reality in Orwell’s 1984 which comes to mind this week as the corporation grapples with a scandal involving an unnamed star presenter.

Viewers of Monday’s Ten O’Clock News on BBC1 and then Newsnight on BBC2 the same evening saw intense discussions by presenters, BBC reporters and guests on the conflicting narratives about the events leading up to the star’s suspension.

The Sun has claimed that the presenter paid thousands of pounds to a young person, allegedly under 18, in exchange for explicit photographs. The newspaper published the story after being contacted by the young person’s parents; the individual responded via a lawyer that the claims were “rubbish”.

The star has not been named in BBC news programmes, despite hosts, guests and most of the watching audience suspecting his identity, rumours of which have been circulating for days on social media. The broadcaster has a long and rich tradition of fine public service journalism; this, though, is treating its audience with a degree of contempt. 

It is true that the BBC will have legitimate concerns about the welfare of the unnamed presenter and the young person. The still unfolding story is also complex in nature. A separate allegation has now been made against the star by a different individual. But while it remains a legal and ethical minefield, giving so much prominence and airtime to the story is questionable.

The broadcaster’s hands are also tied by privacy and libel law, as well as employer obligations regarding staff welfare. UK defamation law has traditionally been so generous to claimants that London earned a reputation for libel tourism, a place where oligarchs and other wealthy types could bring cases to silence their critics. 

The application of those laws became even stricter a year ago when Bloomberg News lost a case that confirmed earlier privacy precedents, Bloomberg had been sued by an individual named in a 2016 story (and referred to in court as ZXC) about a criminal inquiry. The UK supreme court ruled that as a starting point suspects in a criminal investigation have the right not to be named by media groups until formal charges are brought — which can only be overridden by strong public interest considerations.

Media lawyers say the Bloomberg vs ZXC case has hit the appetite of news outlets to name individuals in contentious stories. The case may have been a factor in The Sun’s decision not to name the BBC presenter in its original story last week, when it alleged that a crime may have been committed.

However, there is currently no ongoing police investigation into the case. Indeed, the broadcaster’s director-general Tim Davie said on Tuesday that its own internal investigation into The Sun allegations would be suspended while the police decide what to do. 

Such cases are particularly fraught for the broadcaster, which has been knocked in recent years by the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal and its legal defeat over a privacy breach when it broadcast a police raid on the singer Cliff Richard’s property.

If the BBC star has not broken the law, then it is difficult to see the public interest in naming him. The problem is that the BBC has taken its cue from the national press, leading its bulletins with breathless coverage of a story about its own employee. Trying to cover the news while leading it is a torturous balancing act but it has inevitably created and stoked the public’s interest in the story before all the facts are known. 

It has even live-blogged the saga on its news website, as it did with the recent Phillip Schofield case, when the former ITV This Morning presenter quit after an affair with a male colleague. Ukraine being cleared to eventually join Nato or Joe Biden’s visit to London this week are way down the BBC bulletins this week. A visitor from Mars watching the BBC over the past few days would probably conclude that the story of the anonymous suspended presenter was the most important in the world. If it is, as the broadcaster seems to believe, don’t viewers deserve to know who it is?

matthew.garrahan@ft.com