News, views and top stories in your inbox. Don't miss our must-read newsletter Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Ex-BBC News correspondent Liz MacKean has died after suffering a stroke.

MacKean, 52, worked at the corporation until she quit in 2013 over the decision to shelve her investigation into DJ Jimmy Savile.

The full claims Savile was a paedophile only fully emerged a year later during a Panorama documentary on ITV.

MacKean went on to work on Channel 4's Dispatches programme, but in 2016 her work for Newsnight was finally aired in the BBC's Abused: The Untold Story .

Mum-of-two MacKean began her 20-year career at BBC Hereford and Worcester, before presenting on Breakfast and reporting from Northern Ireland and Scotland, the BBC reports .

(Image: Channel 4) (Image: BBC)

BBC director of news James Harding paid tribute to MacKean tonight saying she had earned a reputation as a "remarkably tenacious and resourceful reporter".

"In Northern Ireland, she won the trust of all sides and produced some of the most insightful and hard-hitting reporting of the conflict," he said.

"It was as an investigative reporter that she really shone, shining a light on issues from the dumping of toxic waste off the African coast to Jimmy Savile, the story for which she is probably best known."

(Image: SWNS.com)

McKean gained a post-graduate diploma in broadcast journalism at Manchester University before joining the BBC.

Her story about the child abuse committed by Savile made headlines across the world after the BBC was accused of trying to cover-up the story by shelving it.

The investigation, with producer Meirion Jones, was later recognised by the London Press Club with a scoop of the year award.

She also won the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Journalism for her work on a series of Newsnight reports in 2010 about toxic dumping in West Africa.

In a Panorma special about its handling of the Jimmy Savile scandal in 2012 MacKean explained how former Newsnight editor Peter Rippon was initially excited.

But she adds: "It was an abrupt change in tone from one day 'excellent, let's prepare to get this thing on air' to 'hold on'."

MacKean says she was left with the clear impression that Mr Rippon was feeling under pressure.

She wrote to a friend documenting a conversation she had with her boss on November 30 - a month after Savile's death: "PR [Peter Rippon] says if the bosses aren't happy [he] can't go to the wall on this one."

She tells the programme: "I was very unhappy the story didn't run because I felt we'd spoken to people who collectively deserved to be heard and they weren't heard... I felt very much that I'd let them down."