Bravery

A long day yesterday for David Jordan, the BBC's Director of Editorial Policy, explaining the BBC's cake-and-eat-it-approach to the law to all outlets from R4's Media Show to Newsnight. He told Amol Rajan that neither Lord Hall or Fran Unsworth were available becaue they were "travelling back from abroad".

Nearly 13 years in the job, and in his 65th year, Mr Jordan, like many previous holders of the post, has become more judge-like than many judges, and persisted in roundly patronising Mr Justice Mann, 67, for "moving the goal posts", "creating new laws", and being wrong on privacy damages. Now, he sighed, the BBC would simply have to demand that the Government puts this right, even if Mr Jordan wasn't entirely sure who to write to. 

I have sympathy with the BBC in some respects - more clarity would be useful on how to balance the rights of freedom of expression with rights to privacy, and judges shouldn't tot up damages on the basis of affront rather than measurable harm. On the other hand, if you take the BBC's current position to a logical conclusion, newsrooms should be issued with a daily list of search warrants, ideally with showbiz names highlighted, and make their own minds up about the public interest in reporting them. And the argument that reporting Sir Cliff was ok because of "the context" of Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall etc is plain wrong. That argument didn't hold sway at all in the BBC over reporting allegations made about politicians in the second half of the last century.

Meanwhile the BBC was back to form and caution with the car crashed outside Parliament. Newspaper websites gave the name of the man in custody around 2215 on Tuesday. The BBC decided to use the name at around 0750 the following morning, quoting 'government sources'.