No charge for undercover journalist
A UNION MEMBER who went undercover with a false name to investigate the treatment of elderly people for BBC Panorama was vindicated when a threat to prosecute here was dropped in August. The Procurator Fiscal in Scotland decided not to proceed against BBC researcher Arifa Farooq for applying for jobs using a false identity.
Arifa Farooq, who works for BBC Scotland in Glasgow, took a job as a carer for a Panorama special, broadcast in April, called Britain’s Homecare Scandal. She worked for Domiciliary Care, which provided at-home care in South Lanarkshire by charging the council just £9.95 an hour.
Arifa Farooq took one day’s training with Age Concern. “That’s part of the problem,” she said. “Anyone can become a carer with very little training.”
Police received a complaint about her obtaining her job by deception — under her sister’s name. She went voluntarily for an interview and was arrested, held for an hour in the cells and told she would be charged with making false disclosures.
But two weeks later she was told the case would not proceed. “Obviously I am really relieved,” she said. “Everybody told me and I knew really that they would never take me to court, but there is always that niggling worry.”
Arifa Farooq was promised all the support the NUJ could give had the case gone ahead. Peter Murray, the deputy Father of the BBC Scotland chapel, said: “Arifa deserved praise for what she did, not persecution. The programme was a classic example of investigative journalism at its best.
“It is important that journalists are able to go undercover when a story they are investigating is serious enough to warrant it.”