BBC accused of ‘blackmailing’ officers

POLICE accused a BBC journalist of ‘blackmailing’ its officers into confirming the raid on Sir Cliff Richard’s apartment, the court heard.

In an internal email, a BBC executive said the reporter who broke the story, Dan Johnson, had been warned not to discuss how he got it, adding: ‘It wouldn’t look pretty if it came out.’

In the email, sent two days after the broadcast, and headed ‘Dan the man’, news editor Gary Smith said the South Yorkshire Police had contacted the BBC to complain

it was effectively blackmailed into cooperating with the corporation.

He wrote: ‘Fantastic world exclusive from Dan. But... there are some issues about exactly how his relationship with SYP developed.

‘SYP said [Dan Johnson] came to them with loads of detail on their investigation and they felt their only course of action to protect their inquiry was to cooperate totally with him. This suggests to me an extreme naivety on their part.

‘But it also suggests (and Dan doesn’t entirely deny this) a rather heavy-handed approach by him.

‘He seems to have been nailing them to a wall, saying if they didn’t give him a guarantee of an exclusive tip-off on the search operation, he’d broadcast the story in advance (which of course we would never have done). One part of me is hugely impressed with his tactics. But it wouldn’t look pretty if it came out. There may be fallout this coming week.’ Following the police complaint, the BBC said the force was not its original source for the information that Sir Cliff was under investigation. Jason Beer QC, for SYP, said the BBC knew that police were not intending to name Sir Cliff. He told the court: ‘It was the act of publication of Sir Cliff’s name that caused the damage to him, and it was the BBC that made the decision to do so.’