London: The BBC is once again under attack over a historic sexual assault investigation – this time, for reporting the police raid on Cliff Richard’s home.
Detectives searched the pop legend’s apartment for more than five hours last week, and since then the national broadcaster has been the focus of a tide of disapproval for reporting the raid and naming its target.
The latest to raise a complaint was former BBC presenter Sir Michael Parkinson, who told ITV News that Richard was the victim of a police “witch hunt” and the way the BBC covered the raid was an “error of judgement”.
Anyone who had not yet been charged with a crime should not be named by police or have their names reported in the press, he said.
The allegation against Richard was passed on to police in 2012, soon after the Jimmy Savile scandal erupted.
A man now in his 40s claimed that Richard assaulted him in 1985 at a rally by the evangelist Billy Graham in Sheffield.
Richard was in Portugal when his lawyers phoned on Wednesday to let him know that the BBC were reporting live on a raid on his Berkshire apartment.
It was immediately clear the BBC had been tipped off. They had a helicopter overhead, a pre-recorded piece to camera from a South Yorkshire police spokesman, and a reporter outside Richard’s home in Portugal.
Police from South Yorkshire and Thames Valley searched the home for more than five hours.
According to a report in the Sunday Times it was the first Richard knew of the police action, though in a statement he released on the day he said he had been aware of allegations against him “for many months”.
In that same statement Richard said the police attended his apartment “without notice, except it would appear to the press”.
It is not usual practice for police to give notice of raids.
However human rights laywer Geoffrey Robertson QC said the leak of the raid meant Richard was being treated like a “bank robber or mass murderer”.
Just hours after their first report of the raid, the BBC’s online story had been amended with "analysis" by their home affairs correspondent predicting the trouble to come.
He wrote that “it used to be common practice for police to let reporters know they were about to raid a celebrity’s house… it was part of the trade of information and favours between cops and hacks that has so recently fallen into disrepute”.
Procedures began to change, Danny Shaw wrote, when the High Court said it was “understandable” for football manager Harry Redknapp to complain about journalists from The Sun newspaper being present when his own home was searched.
The Leveson inquiry concluded that police operations should be controlled more tightly, and since then “tip-offs have dried to a trickle”.
“The force may have to justify its approach in the months to come,” Shaw said.
On Sunday, the force pointed the finger firmly back at the BBC. In a statement, South Yorkshire Police insisted it had not leaked information.
“The force was contacted some weeks ago by a BBC reporter who made it clear he knew of the existence of an investigation. It was clear he was in a position to publish it,” the statement said.
“The force was reluctant to cooperate but felt that to do otherwise would risk losing any potential evidence, so in the interests of the investigation it was agreed that the reporter would be notified of the date of the house search in return for delaying publication of any of the facts.
“Contrary to media reports, this decision was not taken in order to maximise publicity - it was taken to preserve any potential evidence.”
The police also sent a letter of complaint to the BBC, arguing it had contravened its editorial guidelines.
The BBC said normal journalistic procedures had been followed in the coverage and that the original tip-off had not come from police.
But Fairfax understands there was some internal disagreement at the BBC over its coverage of the raid, with management concerned about its reporters’ relationship with police, and the reporters pushing back in defence of their coverage of the story.
It is a sensitive area for the corporation. It was strongly criticised for harbouring, albeit unwittingly, predator Jimmy Savile, and then shelving a BBC team’s expose of the scandal.
Then in 2012 it paid a six-figure sum to Lord McAlpine to settle his libel claim, after a story on the current affairs program Newsnight led to him being wrongly implicated in a child abuse case.
