Huw Edwards' allegations: BBC may need to do more than force out its Director-General Tim Davie to restore trust – John McLellan

The BBC’s initial inquiry following complaints about news presenter Huw Edwards looks cursory to say the least

After an entire working life in news, I shouldn’t be in awe of a journalist just because they’re on the box, but as I took my place opposite St Giles for the Royal procession two weeks ago, I couldn’t prevent a little inner voice saying, “Ooh, there’s Huw Edwards”.

I’d spent most of the preceding week helping to organise media arrangements, so knew the set-up, and I was also a participant as one of a troop of High Constables of Edinburgh, but there was me gawping at Huw, looking trim and perfectly groomed as he broadcast live from a platform above the hoi polloi, the broadcast lamps adding that aura of showbiz glamour even in bright sunshine. OK, so other crews and photographers were on the platform, but Huw beamed out. Only the Sun knew the glare of publicity would turn on him in hours. As many have observed since his wife, ITV news producer Vicky Flind, identified him as the presenter alleged to have paid a 17-year-old £35,000 to send suggestive pictures (although this was subsequently denied by lawyers acting for the young person concerned) he is not just any old presenter but the new Voice of the Nation.

The allegations – not denied in his wife’s statement although she added he would respond when well enough – and others of sending flirtatious messages to people young enough to be his grandchildren, were by any measure a story, but it is a mark of how far British journalism had changed that he was not identified for a week, and the Sun’s initial scoop was less about his behaviour than claims the BBC had failed to investigate properly a complaint raised in May.

Undoubtedly such allegations, if true, would be a story of human failing and tragedy affecting both the presenter and his loved ones, one which will surely be answered in the fullness of time when he is able to do so, but it has created not just a perfect case study for journalism ethics, but a golden opportunity for critics of the British media landscape to put in the boot.

The most obvious issue is that of privacy, and an assumption that because something is not a criminal offence the Press should back off. Legal precedent has promoted this notion, first that of PJS, the extremely well-known performer involved in lurid tales of three-in-a-bed sex whose identity is “protected” by a 2016 Supreme Court ruling, despite being all over the international press and widely named on social media. Then last year an American businessman, known only as ZXC, successfully sued Bloomberg for a story naming him as a fraud suspect, which he was, when the Supreme Court ruled there was a reasonable expectation of privacy up to the point of charges, and reinforced Sir Cliff Richard’s £2m privacy victory against the BBC over coverage of a police raid on his home.

But there is still a public interest justification, and people in public roles regularly have their reputations trashed and smashed for actions which are not criminal. Other than rabid nationalists, no one seriously considers the allegation of grooming a teenager against former SNP minister Derek Mackay was not a story in the public interest. Yet despite Edwards being the state broadcaster’s most prominent news presenter, on a publicly-funded salary of over £400,000, Press critics seem to argue he is not a public figure because he is not an elected politician.

The anti-Rupert Murdoch agitators of the Hacked Off campaign have wasted no time in trying to dismantle the public interest justification, and there have also been inevitable comparisons with the Sun’s Eighties heyday and its Page Three pictures of a topless 16-year-old Sam Fox (her Number 1 hit ‘Touch me (I want your body)’ was released when she was 19), when there is clear public interest in examining the BBC’s alleged lack of rigour in investigating the claims. Would Hacked Off claim this was evidence of the need to reopen the Leveson inquiry into Press standards if the story had been broken by the Guardian?

Whether blinded by concern about his well-documented mental health problems or not, it appears the BBC was incapable of getting the basics right, starting with the failure to speak to him at the earliest opportunity. Maybe the Corporation receives more than one allegation against a staff member a day, but that doesn’t absolve it from the need to find out quickly how much substance allegations hold, and not to suspect complainants are fantasists or extortionists until proven otherwise.

As it was, the initial inquiry looks cursory to say the least, and even my journalism undergraduates know that one email and one unanswered phone call does not constitute an investigation, never mind an organisation which regards itself as a guardian of high editorial standards. Even so, had he been approached with such evidence as they had, for all the BBC knows he might have confessed, and could then have gone on sick leave, citing pressures of the job, which would have been taken at face value, given his past troubles, and afforded him and his family the space they are now receiving. And having gone off air, perhaps the parents would not have gone to the Sun? Perhaps not, but by not approaching the presenter until it was too late, they denied themselves the chance.

As for the parallel investigation by BBC journalists including Victoria Derbyshire, it’s only in the light of the Jimmy Savile cover-up that an editorial decision to treat the rumours as a story rather than a human resources matter can be understood. There are claims Huw Edwards had a certain imperious style, someone above the norms of newsroom management by mere editors, answerable only to the Director-General into whose office he could stroll unannounced, but I can think of no other news organisation in which allegations against a colleague would be regarded as a story first and an HR issue second. Managing the “talent” seems to be a recurrent theme and it will take more than just forcing out the Director-General to restore trust.