BBC Scotland’s head of news has been blasted as “defensive” and “evasive” and described as not a reliable witness by the High Court judge presiding over Cliff Richard’s privacy trial.
The veteran pop singer was awarded £210,000 in damages yesterday, after winning his case against the BBC for its coverage of a police raid on his home in 2014.
Gary Smith, who before moving to Scotland was the BBC’s UK News editor, was singled out for criticism by Justice Mann, who said his obsession with scooping his rivals had affected his judgement.
But the corporation hit back, saying they are considering an appeal against the judgement and described it as a “dramatic shift against press freedom and the long-standing ability of journalists to report on police investigations”.
Richard’s home was raided after an allegation that the singer had sexually assaulted a child in Sheffield following a Billy Graham evangelical rally in the 1980s.
He was never arrested or charged.
BBC journalist Dan Johnson had been tipped off about the raid and co-ordinated with police, which allowed him to film it taking place. Smith had signed off on a helicopter to take aerial shots of South Yorkshire Police searching the star’s house in a gated community in Berkshire.
Richard, who was holidaying in Portugal at the time, complained that the footage infringed his privacy. The court agreed with Mann, who seemed surprised by some of the practices of modern-day journalism, saying that while the investigation “might be of interest to the gossip-monger”, there was not a “genuine public interest” case.
He said Smith’s need to get the story out before his rivals, “probably affected some of his judgment at the time, and gave rise to a certain defensiveness in relation to his later conduct”.
“I consider that Mr Smith was unduly defensive, and to a degree evasive, in much of his evidence.”
He added: “I regret that I felt I could not always rely on him as a reliable witness.”
Mann’s verdict, and his insistence that “a suspect has a reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to a police investigation” could lead to a change in what newspapers and broadcasters are allowed to report about ongoing investigations.
In a statement, BBC director of news Fran Unsworth said that while there were things they “would have done differently” they found it worrying that the “judge has ruled that the very naming of Sir Cliff was unlawful.”
She added: “This judgment creates new case law and represents a dramatic shift against press freedom and the long-standing ability of journalists to report on police investigations, which in some cases has led to further complainants coming forward. “
This would mean “police investigations, and searches of people’s homes, could go unreported and unscrutinised,” Unsworth warned.
“It will make it harder to scrutinise the conduct of the police and we fear it will undermine the wider principle of the public’s right to know. It will put decision-making in the hands of the police.”
Richard was awarded £190,000 damages and an extra £20,000 in aggravated damages because the BBC submitted its coverage of the raid for a Royal Television Society award.
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