A BBC leader has said the broadcaster attempted to act with “calm and rationality” in the wake of serious allegations about one of its top presenters.
Elan Closs Stephens, the acting chair of the BBC, told the Lords media committee on Tuesday the corporation had a “duty of care and a duty of privacy” towards news presenter Huw Edwards, who has been suspended over claims he paid a teenager thousands of pounds for sexuality explicit pictures.
Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, told the committee the corporation had been in touch with the family who made the complaint but that an investigation into Edwards could take weeks or months.
It comes amid a flurry of criticism both of the BBC and The Sun, which originally reported the claims against an unnamed high-profile BBC presenter.
A lawyer representing the person from whom Edwards allegedly bought photographs has dismissed their family’s claims as “rubbish”.
Closs Stephens said the corporation had twin duties of allowing an investigation into the claims against Edwards while also upholding its “duty of care” towards the presenter.
She said: “We had a duty to act with some calm and rationality in the face of lack of rationality and lack of calm.
“There were an awful lot of questions that could not be answered. There was a huge pressure to disclose the name of somebody to whom we had a duty of care and a duty of privacy.
“In addition to the family and young man that were concerned in this maelstrom.
“I was, on the one hand seeking to establish the right of the board to oversee what was happening but at the same time, I was trying my best to make for a calm and rational discussion of the issue before we all got carried away in what could have been very wrong directions.”
Edwards, who is the BBC’s highest-earning newsreader and presents its flagship News at Ten programme, was hospitalised after the claims were made public, with his wife Vicky Flind saying he was “suffering from serious mental health issues”.
Davie told the committee he was not able to give a concrete deadline for the conclusion of an internal BBC probe into Edwards.
He said: “It could take weeks or it could take a couple of months, or even longer."
The Metropolitan Police said previously it believed no criminal activity had taken place.
