A new Substack blog launched by disgraced newsreader and convicted sex offender Huw Edwards has been met with incredulity.
Britain’s one-time highest-paid news anchor pleaded guilty in 2024 to receiving and making indecent images of children and was given a six-month suspended jail sentence – but he’s now launched the blog in an attempt to rebuild “some kind of worthwhile life”.
It’s the latest venture in a line-up of projects said to be part of his comeback, but despite Edwards not making any money off the blog, campaigners are warning that his ability to freely post sets a dangerous precedent.
Campaigner Emma Jane Taylor, founder of grassroots charity Project 90-10, wrote on X/Twitter: “I have been groomed, manipulated and violated by people like Huw Edwards. I know exactly how this works and I recognise the patterns. That is why I am saying clearly that his Substack should be taken down.
“Giving someone convicted of offences involving indecent images of children a public and online platform is a safeguarding failure @Substack. You do not simply get over the behaviours or compulsions that led to those offences. That is not how sexual offending works and it is not how risk disappears.
Taylor added to the BBC: "To think he can simply return to a public platform and be received as though nothing has happened shows a staggering lack of awareness. He is on the sex offenders' register – that should not entitle him to a blog. We don't want to hear from you, Huw.”
According to The i, BBC news staffers are “shocked that Huw’s trying this”, calling it “the same lack of self-awareness he’s always shown”. Another said Edwards likely elected to start a Substack over a TV interview as his posts are “unmediated and entirely Huw uncut”.
Journalist Julia Raeside, on her own Substack page, questioned Edwards’ decision to launch a blog as a form of rehabilitation.
“We’ve talked about comebacks before, and they used to, in times gone by, involve some kind of rehabilitation,” she wrote. “A period of learning and contrition, even if it was just for show. But now, someone can literally be convicted of the most abhorrent thing imaginable and they still think it’s just a matter of letting time pass before they renew their place in the social order.”
Even Barry Tomes, who briefly represented Edwards in the wake of the scandal, told LBC that, while he thought Edwards “has the right” to post on Substack, “he should go away and do none of all this” as he’s “not a good moral compass”.
Meanwhile, The Independent’s Helen Coffey called Edwards’s comeback “strange and unsettling”.
“It has a familiar ring to it, teed up and positioned with all the same hallmarks of toxic men in the media who’ve been popping back out of the woodwork of late to ‘rehabilitate’ their chequered reputations,” Coffey added.
She asked why celebrity redemption arcs never “take place quietly in the shadows, with grace and dignity”.
The Independent has contacted Substack for comment.
Writing on his new Substack blog, which he has said is an attempt to rebuild “some kind of worthwhile life” and discuss mental health, Edwards described the landscape we find ourselves in as one that “celebrates judgment” and “prioritises anger over restraint [and] empowers the cynical”.
He also said he has chosen Substack as a platform that “promotes serious debate and analysis”, but acknowledged "there will be some who do not wish to read my work, and I respect that choice"."But for those who might be interested, I would like to start tentatively by offering some commentary and analysis based on my long experience.”
The Welshman was the subject of a Channel 5 drama in March, starring Martin Clunes in the role of Edwards. Edwards himself criticised the TV film, calling it a “one-sided account” of the saga.
“A number of serious questions still remain to be answered, and not just by me,” he wrote in a statement. “It will now take some time for me to produce my own account, and until then I do not intend to comment any further.”
Edwards added that he felt “deep regret and remorse” for his crimes and said his behaviour was “reckless, shameful, and damaging”.
A previous statement from Channel 5 said: “Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards is based on extensive interviews with the victim, his family, the journalists who revealed his story, text exchanges between the victim and Edwards, and court reporting.
“It has been produced in accordance with Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code. All allegations made in the film were put to Huw Edwards via his solicitors six weeks before transmission.”
