It was a grim sort of guessing game played across Britain last week: who was the mystery BBC broadcaster who had reportedly paid £35,000 to a young person in exchange for sexual images? By Tuesday the field of suspects had narrowed, as horrified presenters, misidentified in social media posts, attempted to distance themselves. Then on Wednesday came the revelation: the hidden man at the centre of this tabloid newspaper accusation was Huw Edwards, the BBC’s lead news anchor, whose calm and authoritative voice had announced the death of the Queen.
The astonishing allegations carried in the Sun newspaper last weekend have split the nation and put many leading commentators at loggerheads, to say nothing of pitting an endangered BBC against Rupert Murdoch’s news empire.
“The idea a big public figure has a double life is going to excite huge interest, but we don’t know the facts yet,” said one former senior BBC news chief. “The BBC must work out if it has been brought into disrepute. The claims could certainly be construed as very undermining of Edwards’ role as the face of the BBC’s coverage of state occasions. He has a special relationship of trust with the public.”
In an alternative world, Edwards, the BBC’s best-paid journalist, might have been swiftly informed of a complaint about his private life, originally made on 19 May. He might then have disproved it with ease, or instead been reprimanded for secretly playing fast and loose with the corporation’s reputation.
But that did not happen. And the reason why has become a crucial question for Tim Davie, director-general of the BBC. At an emergency meeting held on the fourth floor of Broadcasting House the Thursday before last, after the Sun told the BBC of its planned story, Davie outlined options to his stunned corporate, legal and communications heads. Edwards, meanwhile, was enjoying a day off, having lunched with journalist Andrew Billen, who later described the newsreader as in “high spirits”. Shortly afterwards a senior manager informed the 61-year-old that his long career was in jeopardy. He was taken off air while the matter was considered.
Alongside the key question of why a complaint about such a famous BBC face took seven weeks to reach the top of the corporation, decisions taken in the Sun’s newsroom are puzzling. A key issue remains why editor Victoria Newton did not print denials from the young person at the core of its story that any harm had been done. The result was the publication of a lurid front-page splash, quoting just the young person’s mother, which has put the BBC in the dock. While there is no longer a potential charge of criminality, the character of one of its most prominent names has been attacked.
The unproven claim that Edwards paid a teenager for lewd pictures has clearly shocked the public more than other recent salacious stories about celebrities. This is due to Edwards’ £439,000 a year, licence fee-funded role: a role in which he must earn the viewers’ trust and communicate truth on behalf of the BBC. Rather bigger in scale then than May’s revelations about the popular ITV daytime presenter Phillip Schofield and his relationship with a former junior colleague on This Morning.
Twice last week the Edwards drama reached a peak at bang on 6pm. First, on Monday when the Sun’s story was rubbished in a statement from lawyers Child & Child, speaking for the alleged victim. And then on Wednesday, when Edwards’ wife Vicky Flind unexpectedly confirmed her husband as the target of the claim and said he was having hospital treatment for mental illness. On television a visibly rattled Sophie Raworth announced the news, while on BBC Radio 4 David Sillito had the unenviable job of revealing the name at short notice.
The next instalment is to come with TalkTV’s interview with the parents of the young person. As the source of the Sun’s story, they have spoken to the channel for a three-part documentary. TalkTV, owned by Murdoch’s News Corp, is “working on the story” but no broadcast date is set. Whether the couple have been paid to appear is unclear.
The public debate has focused on who to blame. Some are upset that a vulnerable young victim may have been exploited, as their mother alleges. Others put all the trouble caused at the door of the Sun. How did such a personally invasive story reach the threshold required for publication, they ask. Others point to the toxicity of social media. And journalists inside and outside the BBC are questioning its handling of the crisis and the news story itself.
Next Tuesday afternoon Tim Davie, already dented by criticism of his controversial suspension of Gary Lineker in March, will face the House of Lords communications committee. He will be questioned about recent events, his leadership and the adequacy of BBC governance. For some working inside his newsroom the grilling is infuriating. “It makes my blood boil to think that Davie will have to explain himself, while over at the Sun no one is speaking,” said one producer. “The hypocrisy of that newspaper, which in the past has encouraged people to lust over topless young girls.”
The Sun’s explosive allegations fired the starting gun on a social media frenzy about the identity of the “BBC presenter”. The lead story and inside piece, along with a follow-up online article, contained clues about this “household name”. As well as his “six-figure” salary, the presenter, it said, had been “taken off air”. On 6 July, Edwards had been due to appear with the BBC’s Europe editor Katya Adler on the magazine programme The One Show to talk about the upcoming BBC Proms concerts predominantly at the Royal Albert Hall, which they were to present together. Edwards did not turn up, and no one referred to his absence. Four days later the newspaper published a list of the BBC’s top-10 best-paid talent. Four were women and the top earner, Lineker, had already denied he was involved. Just one person, Edwards, had failed to appear on air on a scheduled show.
Executives at the Sun should have understood the risk of what is known as jigsaw identification. By Sunday, social media users were highlighting Edwards’ no-show. Last Tuesday the Daily Mail reported a snap poll suggesting one in six people knew who the mystery man was. The Sun now faces scrutiny of its reporting standards. Its initial article suggested possible criminality, with the allegation that “more than £35,000” had been paid to a young person “since they were 17 in return for sordid images”. Nazir Afzal, a former chief prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said if this had been correct the presenter might have committed offences under the Protection of Children Act 1978, which makes it an offence to make, distribute or show any indecent images of anyone aged under 18.
It soon turned out that the gravest accusation in the Sun – headlined on one story as “Top BBC star who ‘paid child for sex pictures’” – was wrong. On Wednesday the Met police said “there is no information to indicate that a criminal offence has been committed.” South Wales police said it had received information concerning the welfare of an adult in April, but no criminality was identified.
The unsubstantiated accusation of unlawful behaviour, according to Afzal, drove the story – in tandem with frantic speculation on social media. Yet the Sun had published an incomplete account. “We only had a third of the story from the parents [a mother and stepfather],” said Afzal. “We didn’t know what the alleged victim thought and we did not have a response from Edwards.”
The intervention from the young person’s lawyers last Monday, saying the allegations were “rubbish”, also claimed the Sun had been warned ahead of publication that there was no illegal behaviour. The paper’s public interest defence was now looking vulnerable. Media lawyer Mark Stephens does not consider there was a sufficient case for publication without evidence of criminality or grounds to investigate potential criminality. “If you’ve got something about someone’s private life, whether it is sexual peccadilloes or whether they are having affairs, it is not actually in the public interest unless there’s some compelling reason,” he said. “And here, there is no compelling reason other than the fact of curiosity or wanting to have a collateral attack on the BBC.”
Iain Wilson, managing partner at Brett Wilson LLP , who specialises in libel and privacy, sees questions for the Sun about why it did not name Edwards if it felt the public interest in the story outweighed his right to privacy: “The cynical view is that by not naming him, they created intrigue and a massive story that would run and run, leading to mounting pressure on the BBC.”
For Wilson, the merits of the Sun’s position are hard to establish because no evidence was made public. He said the initial article had a “clear imputation of criminality” so there was the risk of a defamation claim from Edwards. It was likely, he added, that a main defence in any litigation would be that the Sun did not identify Edwards. He said: “The key legal test would be whether the reader understood who was being referred to and they are on shaky ground because a lot of people identified Edwards on social media.”
Prospect magazine’s Alan Rusbridger, the former editor of the Guardian, takes the view that the Sun calculated the route of the fuse it lit. “It was less, ‘We name the guilty man’ than, ‘Would someone else mind naming him instead?’ They must have anticipated that, if not the BBC itself, social media would do the rest.”
Last Tuesday the Sun put up a strong defence of its reporting. It had been concerned, it said, by the BBC’s failure to handle a complaint by the young person’s family. Its story about an alleged abuse of power, it stated, “was always squarely in the public interest”. It also issued a statement that said its original story did not allege criminality, and such suggestions “were first made at a later date by other media outlets, including the BBC”.
On the floor of Broadcasting House’s central newsroom the shock that had met the first identification of Edwards was succeeded by action. Once some of the tears that flowed had been stemmed, the plan was to cover the story “without fear or favour”. A few journalists quickly recused themselves because of links to Edwards. A story about the newsreader – at that point not named – had already been published on the BBC’s website concerning claims of abusive messages sent to a younger person on a dating app and separately presenter Victoria Derbyshire had also made tentative journalistic inquiries about him in response to suggestions of unwanted approaches to two current and one former junior staff members. On Wednesday Newsnight brought both stories together, to the alarm of some BBC colleagues who were already uneasy about the attention being given to the Sun’s story.
Speaking on The News Agents podcast on Friday, Emily Maitlis, a former Newsnight presenter herself, questioned why such rumours were reported as news rather than first forwarded to the HR team. Support for Edwards has come from former senior BBC journalists Jon Sopel and John Sergeant, both dismayed by the BBC’s coverage. Sergeant has described it as “the ultimate nightmare” for Edwards and his family, noting the pressures on a news anchor: “It’s not a matter of just factual reporting. He’s expected to be somehow the sort of wise man, the guru who can work out how the United Kingdom is getting on. Well, that’s a terrific weight to bear.”
The Sun’s accusations have also divided opinion about distinguishing the victims here. There are aggrieved people on all sides. Presenters Jeremy Vine and Nicky Campbell have now expressed sympathy for Edwards, but were angered by personally damaging speculation online before Flind confirmed the name. Those tasked with covering the story have felt discomfort too. “It has been very nasty for BBC media journalists,” said one reporter. “While you can agree it is a story, they’ve been attacked by some of their colleagues.”
Others, speaking to the Observer anonymously, are furious that Edwards may have sent inappropriate messages to young people. If proved, they believe it will fuel attacks on the BBC when levels of public trust are already threatened. “Everyone has a reason to be upset,” said Roger Bolton, presenter of the Beeb Watch podcast. “There has been lots of collateral damage, and yet we still don’t know how scandalous or not the behaviour at the centre of this is.” The veteran broadcaster, a former presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Feedback, makes a distinction between the BBC’s behaviour to its staff and its role as a news broadcaster. “Was the original complaint in May perhaps less concerning than other issues? And on the journalistic side, was five minutes on a news bulletin too long? Thank God they over-reported it, rather than under-reporting it, though.”
After an era uncovering what was dubbed “Tory sleaze” in the 1990s, the former BBC executive Mark Damazer recalls deliberately stepping back from covering private misdemeanours. “We decided we would pause – and assess whether there was a real public interest reason. It wasn’t good enough to say, ‘It’s fascinating that this person has a complicated and vivid life.’ There had to be something more – possible criminality or hypocrisy. The upshot was that our critics – and there were many – thought we were going easy on people who were famous or powerful. And to some extent the BBC has to recognise the media world in which it operates. You should try to go your own way, but you can’t completely ignore the pool in which you are swimming.”
Former BBC reporter Jonathan Maitland is disturbed that the May complaint about a high-profile journalist was not apparently taken sufficiently seriously. It reminds him, he said, of the BBC’s dismissal of the first reports that Martin Bashir, a former religion editor, had falsified documents to win his 1995 interview with Diana, Princess of Wales. “The Sun set too low a bar to run its story,” Maitland said, “but people are entitled to ask what sort of person Edwards is, with his profile. If people then decide it doesn’t matter, fine, but it is a problem when people are out to get the BBC. I would be staggered if he presents the news again without being entirely cleared.”
Initial allegations about Bashir, the subject of a new play by Maitland, were wrongly judged as part of a tabloid obsession with royal history, he said. “But they were just saying, ‘This is what the guy does. This is who he is.’”
Bolton suspects the furore will one day rank low in the BBC’s roster of infamy. He predicts Davie will not resign, as his predecessor Greg Dyke did in 2004 after the Hutton report, or George Entwistle did in 2012 when Newsnight falsely implicated Lord McAlpine in the north Wales child abuse scandal. The Sun’s story, though, could well stick in viewers’ minds more than the resignation of BBC chairman Richard Sharp last spring for failing to reveal his part in securing a loan for Boris Johnson. Bolton looks first, he says, at whether a scandal weakens trust and he is chiefly alarmed only by evidence that a BBC editorial decision has been influenced by external pressure, or that self-preservation was prioritised: “I see none of that here.”
However, an individual’s right to privacy was at stake and a transgression here might prompt legal action. Privacy laws have been strengthened by a string of judgments in the last decade. A Supreme Court ruling in 2016 involving a celebrity known as PJS found there was no public interest in disclosing private sexual encounters.
In this case, the head of a BBC anchor made an enticing target and the Sun considered there was a public interest. It is no accident that such beacons of solemnity often pop up in jokes. In the past Charlie Brooker and Armando Iannucci have used Edwards’ name as an emblem of rectitude in TV comedy shows. Spin doctor Malcolm Tucker refers to an unspecific “libellous” rumour about the newsreader in The Thick of It. Iannucci said this weekend the name was picked at random: “We were just looking for a respectable figure, [it] could have easily been Attenborough or Dimbleby.”
A BBC statement already speaks of “lessons to be learned” and Davie has asked Leigh Tavaziva, the BBC’s group chief operating officer, “to assess whether our protocols and procedures are appropriate in light of this case”.
In a world where social media instantly amplifies the impact of publication, both regulation and process seem to lag behind.
