In the latest in a long line of criticism and legal threats, football manager Kevin Bond has launched a legal battle against the BBC following a Panorama investigation into allegations of bungs.
Bond, currently manager of AFC Bournemouth, claims he was sacked from his job as assistant manager of Newcastle United following a Panorama investigation broadcast in September last year.
Bond claims that the programme had a catastrophic effect on his life and that he receives regular abuse as a result of allegations in the programme that he would consider receiving payments from agents.
The latest court battle comes weeks after the former general manager of Islamic Relief UK, Waseem Yaqub, accepted undisclosed libel damages and a public apology from the BBC over a Panorama programme called Faith, Hate and Charity. Although Yaqub was not the subject of the programme, it was a photo of Yaqub standing next to the subject, which Yaqub claimed linked him to terrorist activity.
Britain’s richest doctor and leading IVF expert, Mohamed Taraanissi, has also threatened to sue Panorama after what he claimed were defamatory allegations about techniques used at fertility clinics.
The current series, including its investigations into the safety of the RAF’s Nimrod spy planes, has been trailed on BBC news programmes.
The scientology edition, which gained notoriety because of journalist John Sweeney’s tirade against a scientologist, was posted on YouTube.
Panorama, which was moved from its Sunday slot and cut to a half-hour programme on Monday, has made the front pages of the national press, but has also come under scrutiny from the critics and experts.
The credibility of Paul Kenyon’s investigation into the health risks of WiFi was questioned by the BBC’s own science correspondent David Gregory and The Guardian’s ‘bad science’columnist.
Kenyon responded to criticism, defending the content as ‘a legitimate piece of journalism”.
The edition claiming that the results of toxicology tests meant it was certain that Pakistan’s cricket coach
Bob Woolmer was rendered helpless before being strangled, has this week been discredited after new tests confirmed that he instead died of natural causes.
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