BBC TO REPORT QUEEN’S (AND MURDOCH’S) LAWYER TO REGULATOR

The lawyer for News International who threatened to sue the BBC last March if it went ahead with a Panorama report alleging that the publishers of the now-defunct News of the World, had misled Parliament when they claimed that a single “rogue” reporter was responsible for the voicemail hacking conducted by the tabloid may face disciplinary proceedings by Britain’s Solicitors Regulation Authority. Julian Pike, a partner of Farrers, whose clients include the queen, admitted to a parliamentary committee last week that he knew that executives of NI had made misleading statements to Parliament about the hacking. In a letter to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, the BBC said that the producers of Panorama, the public broadcaster’s top-rated morning talk show, said that they “were surprised to hear Mr Pike’s testimony … since, on the face of it, it seems to contradict one aspect of what he’d written in a letter to the program.” In his response, Pike said that his testimony to Parliament last week referred only to one case that did not involve the “rogue” reporter, Clive Goodman.