A junior reporter has been sacked after naming a high-profile TV figure allegedly questioned in connection with the Jimmy Savile sex abuse investigation on Twitter.
The news comes after Press Gazette reported this week that journalists are blaming the impact of the Leveson report for a police refusal to confirm the identity of a high profile Savile suspect.
The Met Police announced on Thursday that they were questioning a man in his 80s under caution as part of Operation Yewtree but refused to confirm his identity to journalists on an off-the-record basis.
He was, however, widely identified on Twitter.
HoldTheFrontPage reports this morning that among those who named him was a junior reporter on an Archant-owned weekly newspaper, which has been confirmed by sources at the company.
The reporter was said to have “openly speculated that the person being interviewed was a named celebrity, saying he ‘would love this to be true’”, and in a second Tweet “recycled a joke about the same entertainer that was ‘doing the rounds’”.
The reporter’s account has been deleted and the reporter has left the company.
A spokesman for Archant said it was an “an internal disciplinary matter”.
Leveson was widely criticised in the press for his apparent failure to tackle issues surrounding the internet – just one of the report’s 1,987 pages deal with the issue of social networks and blogs
He described the internet as an “ethical vacuum” that “does not claim to operate by express ethical standards, so bloggers and others may, if they choose, act with impunity”.
Today it was revealed that veteran BBC sports journalist Stuart Hall, 82, has been charged three offences of indecent assault. Hall's arrested was said to be unconnected to operation Yewtree
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