Stephen Meesham repeated his 1990s abuse allegations earlier this week and in the wake of the subsequent internet gossip, the wrong senior Conservative politician was identified – again. The confusion wasn’t resolved by Channel 4 news filing a report on Thursday 8th November stating they had been shown a compiled list including a Tory politician that, like Newsnight, they did not name either. The wrong politician decided today to publicly deny the allegations and Mr Meesham confirmed the mistaken identity and apologised. The politician is also taking legal action starting with the BBC. That was the daytime story on Friday 9th November.
By the evening, the BBC had also apologised separately and suspended all investigative journalism activities of Newsnight, the show which originally took criticism for dropping its initial investigation into Jimmy Savile. The BBC has the story here, The Guardian here and check Google news for the rest of the media reaction.