Image: Sir Cliff Richard speaking last month after being awarded damages against the BBC. Credit: Victoria Jones/PA Images
On August 15th the BBC finally threw in the towel. On the last day before it had to decide whether to seek permission from a Court of Appeal judge to take the Cliff Richard case to appeal, it announced it would not challenge the judgement. The BBC now faces rulings by Mr Justice Mann, the trial judge, on how much of Cliff Richard’s costs it will need to pay, which will inevitably take its total bill well above the current £1.9 million. The amount could rise perhaps to £2.25 million, making the decision to name the entertainer as the subject of a police investigation easily the most expensive editorial error in the BBC’s history.
Yet whilst admitting defeat the BBC continued to churn out false claims about the significance of the case, and continued to be supported by outside journalists who seem not to have read the original judgement.
