‘Trial by Twitter’ for those named in the BBC scandal is desperately unfair – and dangerous

This doesn’t feel very much like a lawful process, let alone natural justice, for whoever it is. It feels like a modern, digital version of lynching – and any celebrity will do

It doesn’t take very long to browse social media and find out who the BBC “presenter” in the news is not.

It’s not Gary Lineker, it’s not Rylan Clark, it’s not Jeremy Vine, it’s not Nicky Campbell and it’s not any of the other people who’ve felt it necessary to make a denial.

All have been forced, almost blackmailed, into this by the keyboard sleuths of Twitter calling them a “nonce”, the accumulated malign speculation helpfully collated by suitable hashtags. Suddenly, we’ve all acquired the brilliant digital forensic skills of Colleen Rooney.

As more and more high-profile figures are forced through mass social humiliation to declare that it’s not them, the toxic allegations move on to other names. Eventually, via a process of elimination, the person involved will be identified. Can we doubt it? I’ve heard that the lawyers have a new concept, “Twibel”, but there’s not much sign that it’s deterring the flood of accusations.

This doesn’t feel very much like a lawful process, let alone natural justice, for whoever it is. It feels like a modern, digital version of lynching, and any celebrity will do.

As I write this, I’m intensely conscious of the laws of libel, that I’m not in possession of many of the facts, and that it’s morally wrong to destroy someone’s reputation by reckless speculation. So we in the mainstream media don’t just chuck names around like that, because it can go horribly wrong for all concerned, legally and morally.

We saw what happened to the victims of the fantasist “Nick”, Carl Beech. He constructed elaborate and false allegations about VIP child abuse and murder, all of whom had their lives and reputations ruined before the truth came out. No one wanted to see that happen again, and the police reformed their procedures accordingly.

The Cliff Richard case, when his privacy was invaded by being filmed, by the BBC, when the police arrived to search his home in 2014, rightly led to a much more circumspect approach about identifying people in the public eye.

Yet the same caution obviously does not apply to social media, and channels such as Twitter have degenerated into formidable engines of injustice. One day a social media platform may emerge that is both engrossing and responsible, but there’s no sign that Elon Musk is going to deliver it. Last time I looked he was suggesting that he and Zuckerberg publish the comparative dimensions of their genitalia, to prove some point or other.

It you take a step back, it all seems grotesquely wrong, and not just because we’ve replaced “trial by media” with “trial by social media”. So let me say what should have happened. Many years ago I worked at the BBC on a programme desk, and every so often you’d get letters in (if you remember such things) usually anonymous accusing someone on the telly of fairly serious and often bizarre and unlikely misdemeanours.

We didn’t do much about them even if they were identified, and couldn’t do anything if there was no way of contacting them. If they called in, and they were insistent, then we’d tell them to contact the police or get a lawyer. “Don’t get involved” was the motto. And that is what should be happening in this case.

If a serious and apparently substantiated allegation is made about any employee in any organisation, and it’s nothing to do with their conduct at work, then the accusers and the allegations should be directed to the nearest police force and legal advice. The BBC can do many things but it cannot adequately investigate the private lives of its staff because it has neither the powers nor the expertise to do so.

If the BBC is foolish enough to take on the task – as appears to have happened – then it cannot possibly get anything right, which suits a certain anti-BBC narrative very well. The BBC needs to get out of that line of work.

The BBC can listen to the family of the person involved in the presenter case, read what The Sun reports, and hear whatever their staff member says, but can’t properly determine the truth or dispense justice. That is up to the law. All the BBC can actually do is sack or suspend the individual – and it can’t suspend everyone who has a spurious or vexatious allegation thrown at them.

In order to justify sacking or suspending someone they’d have to be convinced that the person was guilty of breaching their employment contract and guidelines, or that they had committed a serious criminal offence. Even then the person would have recourse to a tribunal. Where the BBC went wrong, possibly, in the mystery presenter case, is that it seems they did not immediately tell the family to go to the police and get a solicitor.

The notorious Jimmy Savile case, which rightly scarred the BBC, is instructive. Some, though not all, of Savile’s crimes were indeed connected to his BBC work, and many were loosely based in his fame, derived from appearing on BBC TV and radio. There were credible claims being made against him, directly and indirectly.

As I recall, there were vague rumours circulating about him long before his death and posthumous disgrace. The BBC should have done much more at the time about Savile, but, in the end, given the sheer scale and depravity of his behaviour it was only ever going to be the police that could stop him, and they too failed. He should have ended up in jail for a long time, and not just fired from Jim’ll Fix It.

Whatever this current mystery presenter has done and whatever the circumstances, I can’t see at the moment why the BBC would be implicated or involved, and it’s surely a matter for the coppers. If there is to be justice for the alleged victim then it’s about more than this presenter being on air.

Somehow, the BBC has found itself way out of its depth trying to be an arm of the criminal justice system, when it ought to have just put the family in touch with the police and then stepped back, pending a proper independent investigation. And the rest of us should stopping trying to guess.