By summer’s end, the BBC presenter manhunt will seem an even stranger news storm than it already does. In the wider world, the past few days have in reality been dominated by terrifying global climate crisis incidents, a crunch wartime summit on Ukraine, an international row about cluster munitions, and a host of bad domestic British economic news. Yet throughout that period, most British newspapers, and almost every BBC news bulletin, have been focused on following the Sun’s 8 July front page story alleging payments by a star BBC presenter to a teen for sexual photos.
In an echo of the furore over the ITV presenter Phillip Schofield in May, the BBC story has all but obliterated the normal news values of many outlets. On Wednesday, the pursuit culminated with the naming, by his wife, of Huw Edwards, the BBC’s senior news presenter. As a result, a lot of air has already quickly gone out of what is suddenly a much less prominent news story. Yet the serious consequences remain.
Few people or institutions in this story will emerge undamaged. Mr Edwards is now in hospital with mental health problems. His national standing has taken a lasting battering. The person whose family made the allegations is said to be feeding a serious drug habit and may soon be named and in the spotlight. Both families, those of accuser and accused, have been pummelled by a whirlwind. For them, this story is far from over. On every side, lives have been upended.
This has not been British journalism’s finest hour. The BBC, the Sun, the press pack and social media all have questions to answer, in some cases fundamental ones. The BBC is accused of being slow to respond to the family’s initial claims and to investigate their allegations, leading them to take their story to the Sun. The decision not to name Mr Edwards may have been in line with privacy law guidelines but raises questions about the exercise of the BBC’s duty of care to other presenters. The concerns of more junior staff should still be investigated. Meanwhile BBC news has given immense prominence to investigating the story, feeding suspicions that the corporation may be less concerned with news values than with protecting itself against a hostile government.
The Sun is now squarely in the line of fire too. Its initial claim that the presenter had paid a 17-year-old for explicit images was not well sourced. Through lawyers, the young person has dismissed the story as rubbish, and has alleged that the Sun knew of the denial before launching its 8 July splash. The police, too, have concluded that there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing. The paper’s decision to run the story without naming the presenter triggered a torrent of uninformed speculation on social media. The Sun has said it will cooperate with the now resumed BBC investigation, but such decisions raise important standards issues for the press generally.
It is a sorry tale all round, which speaks to a lack of individual and corporate self-awareness. This is not to claim that there can be no public interest in a story of this kind. Clearly there can. But the Edwards coverage proved flawed and controversial in ways that are too substantial to brush aside. British journalism should be very concerned that it does not come well out of the way the story was handled by the Sun.
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