BBC potential appeal re Cliff Richard

[IWannaSeeHowItEnds]

Aibu to think that the BBC, having had their arses handed to them this morning, have no business considering appeal against the judgement?
I don't agree with them spending even more of our money justifying their appallong behaviour.

The BBC, when it gets on with the business of programme making, is superb. But they are not the only game in town anymore - netflix and other streaming services are giving customers amazing original programmes without ads. So the BBC has to mark itself out as worth public money in some other way.
It used to be that BBC news was the go to place for information - unbiased and factual. It is a real problem when the BBC instead of reporting the news, becomes the news because of their conduct or reports mews with a clear bias based on having their own agenda.

Having an agenda is one thing. Every news agency does that and I suppose it's the price we pay for them being there as an important arm of free society.

The problem I have is they don't seem answerable to anyone even for outright crimes against children. Publicizing accusations against people before they have had a fair trial, with (in my opinion) a clear intent to burn that person down, is again not something you would expect from an organization that was answerable for its behaviour, or indeed from anyone with integrity.

...and this gets to the crux of the problem with the beeb. They are a vestige of old authoritarianism - established to propagandist to the lower orders and make sure they thought the right things. While the rest of it has been largely dismantled, the BBC remains as a 1950s style state institution - you do what you are told, complaints from the plans don't matter, know your place and you had better bloody well pay for it because it's off to prison with you if you refuse.

This thing should either be changed radically or disbanded. We live in an age of freely available information we don't need to be forced to pay for a state propaganda service to fix our tiny brains for US, certainly not one that amasses so much power and so much spare cash it can essentially do what the hell it likes.

complaints from the plebs*

The BBC shouldn't have an agenda beyond informing the public of the facts in as unbiased a way as possible. If I want an editor/journalists opinion, I can get that everywhere else. Public funded news shouldn't be using their position to improve their own reputation or try to influence public opinion.
Of course, if they'd behaved properly in the first place, they wouldn't be where they are now.

Of course, if they'd behaved properly in the first place, they wouldn't be where they are now.

Absolutely. The reason for this is that any attempt to have checks and balances is basically a joke. This is what can you expect when it is compulsory to be a customer. They are an appendix really, but somehow they keep their position. It's almost as if no politician dares to confront them for some reason.

I'm afraid the same could have been written about our courts. The accused has a lot of protection designed to ensure that we don't convict the innocent, although some of our more authoritarian Home Secretaries of all political colours have chipped away at those protections a little over the years. But if, despite the protections, you are wrongly convicted of a crime it is difficult to get that conviction overturned. You can only appeal on two grounds - that the trial was legally flawed in some way or that there is new evidence. You cannot appeal on the basis of evidence that was available to the defence at the time of the trial. The idea is to prevent the defence deliberately holding back some evidence so that they can have another go with a different jury. Unfortunately it means that you won't be able to appeal if, for example, your defence fails to appreciate the significance of a piece of evidence and therefore fails to present it to the court. I know of a case where the prosecution's case was so weak that the defence decided their best approach was to highlight that weakness by not presenting any evidence at all. To their surprise, the accused was convicted. They were then unable to appeal using the evidence they had that undermined the prosecution's case because it was not new evidence, so a man who was undoubtedly innocent had to serve out his sentence. The Court of Appeal won't protect you against mistakes by your defence nor will it protect you against perverse decisions by juries.

Even if you do have genuine new evidence, the Court of Appeal is often far too concerned with upholding the reputation of the justice system. It has improved over the years but they still sometimes produce decisions that go through all kinds of logical gymnastics to uphold a verdict in the face of evidence that most people would think clearly undermines it.

This is something I am passionate about, hence the length of this post despite the fact that we are getting seriously off topic (sorry!). I wish we put as much thought into helping those wrongly convicted to get their conviction overturned as we put into stopping the innocent being convicted in the first place.

There are areas where I think our justice system is better than the USA's. Unfortunately this is not one of them.

The BBC should definitely appeal. The only reasonable argument re this situation is whether it is ever acceptable to release the name of a suspect of this type. Whilst that is still legal, the BBC were 100% correct.

Even if you do have genuine new evidence, the Court of Appeal is often far too concerned with upholding the reputation of the justice system. It has improved over the years but they still sometimes produce decisions that go through all kinds of logical gymnastics to uphold a verdict in the face of evidence that most people would think clearly undermines it.

Lord Denning springs to mind.

Oh, and don't forget even if you are cleared on appeal, you can kiss goodbye to any compensation these days. In fact you could come out owing the Ministry of Justice money. After all, you will be charged for your board and lodging in jail.

User, I don't have any issue with the BBC naming him so long as that remains legal. I think it would be better though if there was anonymity until a person has been charged. CR was never even arrested, let alone charged.
My problem with the BBC is that they colluded with the police and then made this story and ruined an innocent man's life. And now, instead of accepting the judgement of the court, they are threatening to continue putting CR through more court action.

Great post bridge. Had no idea that an innocent person could be penalised for having a poor defence team and that evidrnce proving innocence can be disregarded.
People like CR can afford good legal teams but what about everybody else?

user not sure you've grasped what actually happened!

Or maybe you think there should be no rules were suspected criminals are concerned... or maybe just suspected pedophiles ??

Either way, I am glad the law disagrees with you!

The BBC have brought this on themselves. People in that organisation KNEW about Saville, KNEW about Stuart Hall etc and did NOTHING. As a result, the BBC have swung the pendulum round too far to try and ensure they are seen as beyond reproach when it comes to celebrity sex allegations. SYP put their hands up pretty swiftly and admitted they were wrong and settled out of court; BBC should have done the same. The BBC have never broken any "super injunction" naming celebrities with gagging orders on things which could equally have fallen under "public interest" - why not?

Once upon a time the BBC investigative reporting was astonishing. Where's that gone? It's almost non-existent. All the stuff that is coming out about Aaron Banks, Vote Leave breaking electoral law - that's the stuff they should be delving into and years ago would have done.

All the hounding of some people who are alive and slandering others who are no long alive to defend themselves eagerly joined in by the BBC and Daily Mail. The stuff around Harvey Proctor being involved in some group of politicians abusing and murdering children was ludicrous and has been proven to be total rubbish, but it's ruined his life, other dead politicians are forever tarnished. Finally, "Nick" the guy who came up with this, and seems to be a serial fantasist and has been doing this for years, is being investigated himself and charged with an offence. But he is STILL anonymous, unlike all those he pointed fingers at.

The only reasonable argument re this situation is whether it is ever acceptable to release the name of a suspect of this type. Whilst that is still legal, the BBC were 100% correct

It is not legal and has not been for some time. We all have a right to privacy. For a suspect, that has to be balanced against media organisation's rights to freedom of expression. If there is a public interest in naming the suspect (as opposed to it being interesting to the public) media organisations can do so. In this case the BBC failed to demonstrate that naming the suspect was in the public interest.

This is just one of the reasons I despise the BBC and refuse to pay the license.
I'd love nothing more than to see the BBC fall and disappear.
Not only are they not 'Unbiased' at all, they also fund mega rich people that do very little whilst criminalising the poor and authorising unwarranted harassment of people they assume are guilty with no proof.

Basically... The C in BBC stands for Cunts.

It's harder to think of a more succinct yet perfect mission statement than

Inform, educate, entertain.

Innocent until proven guilty without exception.
We do that here in Ireland.

The recent rape case in Northern Ireland became a circus because under UK law the accused were named.

The BBC ae absolutely right to consider appealing, for all the reasons set out in this article. The decision is really potentially very dangerous.

Even more of our money squandered on lawyers. No thanks.

I disagree with the Joshua Rozenberg article. It was written before the judgement and makes a number of factual statements that we now know are incorrect.

Gloria Hunniford was on the Marian Finucane Show on RTE radio saying it cost Cliff millions to defend his good name against false accusations.

Looks like the BBC is going to appeal. They are trying to argue that the judge is wrong in law. Given the precedents quoted in the judgement I don't think they will succeed. The idea that a suspect in a police investigation may be entitled to privacy is not new. But we'll see what the Court of Appeal makes of it.

Looks like the BBC is going to appeal.

Because if they don't, they are accepting that they were in the wrong ... and that would never do.

It's double or quits justice.

There's also the inevitable "guilt by attrition" in that by appealing, the BBC keeps the "Cliff is dodgy" trope alive in the public mind. Which I hope the appeal court take account of ...

None of which stands to salvage any reputation the BBC had in the world of serious journalism.

It's disgraceful. We pay our licence fees for making programmes, not for paying fat cat lawyers to defend the indefensible.

Innocent until proven guilty without exception.
We do that here in Ireland

Jimmy Saville is innocent then?

My understanding is that the judge said that even if the BBC had just mentioned he was being investigated, it would have been an invasion of privacy.
Therefore, no media will ever be able to name anyone being investigated, which could cause issue with future crimes, specifically sex related, when the name of a suspect can help bring forward other victims.

I think it might make editors very cautious about naming those under investigation but I see nothing in the judgement that makes it impossible to name them.

I totally agree with your point about the difficulties of encouraging other vicitims to come forward in abuse cases as a result of this though. The evidence of multiple victims has been essential to the successful prosecution of some people and provides an element of corroboration a single victim case could never have.

I'm afraid Cliff Richard lost any sympathy I may have had for him when he said that he'd rather ten guilty people "get away with it" than one innocent person suffer like he had. I agree he's been put through an ordeal, but to compare that to the trauma inflicted on victims by the guilty is just crass imo.

You cannot appeal without grounds just because u feel like it. There must be legal considerations that allow this appeal. Regardless of who was right or wrong it isnt fair to comment in advance of a ruling.