Piers Morgan has berated the BBC on Twitter for failing to name the presenter accused of paying a teenager for sexually explicit photos.
The Sun first reported last week that a high-profile broadcaster had paid more than £35,000 for explicit pictures and appeared in his underwear on a video call with a then-17-year-old. Its report also omitted the star’s name.
The BBC confirmed on Sunday (9 July) it had made contact with the Metropolitan Police over the presenter’s reported actions.
A second young person has since revealed they felt threatened by the same presenter after he contacted them on a dating app.
“Everyone in UK media knows who it is, including everyone working at the BBC – many of whose other male presenters continue to be wrongly targeted/tarnished on social media as being the person involved,” Morgan alleged on Twitter on Tuesday (11 July). “It’s an untenable situation. The presenter should name and defend himself.”
The Independent has contacted the BBC for comment.
“The BBC now exposing more damaging revelations about their own star presenter, but still declining to name him. Don’t remember them being *quite* so circumspect when they went after Sir Cliff,” Morgan added in a second tweet referencing Cliff Richard’s 2018 lawsuit against the company.
Morgan’s statement comes after Jeremy Vine, one of the BBC’s highest-profile presenters, urged the man at the centre of the row to come forward.
“I’m starting to think the BBC Presenter involved in the scandal should now come forward publicly”, Vine tweeted.
“These new allegations will result in yet more vitriol being thrown at perfectly innocent colleagues of his. And the BBC, which I’m sure he loves, is on its knees with this.
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“But it is his decision and his alone.”
A police force outside of London has told the BBC that it was contacted back in April by the parents of the first young person, now aged 20 and at the centre of initial allegations reported in The Sun.
The force said “no criminality was identified” at the time. But it added that it had since met the Metropolitan Police and BBC officials and “as a result of recent developments, further enquiries are ongoing to establish whether there is evidence of a criminal offence”.
As many people question why the star’s anonymity has been maintained, Mark Stephens, media law expert and partner at Howard Kennedy, told The Independent that the landmark 2018 ruling in favour of Richard has made outlets more cautious.
The singer won a privacy case against the BBC over its coverage of a South Yorkshire Police raid on his home in Sunningdale, Berkshire, after he was falsely accused of historical sex offences.
This was further entrenched when the Supreme Court, the UK’s highest court, ruled that a person being investigated for a crime generally has “a reasonable expectation of privacy”.
“That is why The Sun and no other newspaper has identified the presenter, and part of that was to avoid this social media frenzy with names being bandied about,” Stephens said.
