A BBC presenter, who has been suspended after being accused of paying a teenager for sexually explicit photographs, has now been accused of sending abusive messages to a second young person who threatened to expose them, after they made contact on a dating app, the young person has told the BBC. Today, The Sun newspaper - who broke the story - also makes more allegations - including that the presenter broke lockdown rules in 2021 to meet someone from a dating site.
The BBC says it has been asked to pause its investigations after a virtual meeting with police. Previously, the BBC said it is ‘working as quickly as possible to establish the facts’ into the unnamed male presenter. The Met said they are 'assessing' information from the BBC but there is no current investigation.
Unsurprisingly, social media has been awash with speculation about who the BBC presenter is since allegations were first reported by The Sun on Friday. According to the newspaper, the presenter paid for explicit photos over a three-year period, starting when the young person was 17. The mother of the young person told the Sun on Sunday her child had used the money to fund a drug habit. However, a lawyer for the young person, now 20, has since come out to say the allegations are 'rubbish'.
'For the avoidance of doubt, nothing inappropriate or unlawful has taken place between our client and the BBC personality and the allegations reported in the Sun newspaper are rubbish,' the lawyer wrote in a letter to the BBC, according to their report.
Yesterday, BBC director general Tim Davie said the BBC needed to get right the 'balance between privacy, duty of care, and a very serious allegation'.
In an interview by Sarah Montague on BBC Radio 4, he said 'corporate investigations looked at the log, a summary of the call, of 29 minutes duration. That summary then goes to the corporate investigations team.' He said they judged it to be a serious allegation.
On the gap between the initial contact and the presenter being approached over the allegation, he defended the delay, saying it would not be right to put every unverified complaint directly to every presenter immediately without trying to validate it.
'Who is the BBC presenter?' is now trending on Google
Now, ‘Who is the BBC presenter?’ is a trending search term on Google, as is ‘BBC presenter sacked today’ and 'BBC presenter scandal who is it rumours'. People are also searching for 'Kelvin MacKenzie names BBC presenter' after the former editor of The Sun said the newspaper made a 'terrible error' and looked 'weak' in not naming the presenter.
To be clear, no arrests of a BBC presenter have been made in relation to this, according to the Met. But speculation about who the BBC presenter is has also caused untold harm to many who are being accused online, with Rylan Clark speaking out about people assuming it was him based on misleading posts over the weekend. Rylan, Jeremy Vine, Nicky Campbell, and Gary Lineker have all publicly squashed the online speculation they are the star in question, as has BBC Breakfast presenter Jon Kay. Jeremy Vine has repeated his calls for the presenter to name himself.
According to a timeline published by the BBC and The Sun, the young person’s family first complained to the corporation about one of its presenters back in May. ‘The BBC first became aware of a complaint in May,’ a statement by the BBC said. ‘New allegations were put to us on Thursday of a different nature and in addition to our own enquiries we have also been in touch with external authorities, in line with our protocols.’
The new allegations reportedly came on the 6th of July, according to director general Tim Davie, with The Sun publishing its report on the following day that alleged a BBC presenter paid £35,000 to a teenager for sexually explicit photographs. On Sunday, the BBC confirmed a presenter had been suspended and they were in touch with the police. Later that day, The Sun reported that said presenter had made ‘panicked calls’ to the young person and reported that the family are upset with the BBC’s response to the allegations.
‘When I see him on telly, I feel sick,’ the young person's mother told The Sun. ‘I blame this BBC man for destroying my child’s life. Taking my child’s innocence and handing over the money for crack cocaine that could kill my child.’
When will the BBC report who the presenter is?
It seems that until the BBC presenter in question chooses to come forward or the Met charges that person with a criminal offence, online speculation will continue to be rife. But media lawyer Mark Stephen’s has warned people against calling out specific individuals online or making assumptions, stating that people are in danger of breaking the law.
Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, he explained that the laws of defamation come into play when even suggestions of someone's identity are made online.
‘Even if you don't say “it is” - by asking the question “is it?” and identifying an individual - what you are doing is saying “I believe this individual is bad or could have possibly behaved in a reprehensible way”’, Stephens explained.