Huw Edwards: why is the BBC so scandal-prone? (2024)

"Has any fall from grace ever been so catastrophic or more profound?" asked Jan Moir in the Daily Mail.

For 20 years, BBC news anchor Huw Edwards was Britain's master of ceremonies, covering national events from general elections to royal weddings. He was even entrusted with delivering the news of the death of Queen Elizabeth II to the nation.

All that came to a shattering close last July, when he was identified as the BBC figure accused of paying a 17-year-old boy for sexual images; then last week, 14 months after he'd presided over the King's coronation, he appeared at a magistrates' court in London to plead guilty to making indecent images of children as young as seven. (He had been sent them on WhatsApp, but the law classes this as "making", as it means there is another copy of the image.) He now faces up to ten years in prison.

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BBC bosses facing questions

His reputation lies in tatters, said Jenny Hjul on Reaction, but our national broadcaster also has serious questions to answer, namely: why did it continue to pay Edwards his full £475,000 salary – including a £40,000 pay rise – even after it had been informed of his arrest, in November 2023, for possessing illegal images?

Or, to put it another way: "What level of depravity must a top BBC star sink to in order to get sacked?" BBC bosses say that it would have been legally complicated to fire Edwards, who had been admitted to a clinic suffering from mental health issues, before any charges had even been brought. He finally resigned this April, on medical grounds.

But it has been reported that the BBC's own internal inquiry, launched last year, had revealed evidence of plenty of other potentially sackable offences: former and present employees said they'd received inappropriate messages from him; a junior producer said he'd been invited by a "pushy" Edwards to share his hotel room in Windsor on the eve of Prince Philip's funeral. But it seems the BBC swept all this under the carpet. Such is the level of public anger, it is now facing calls from ministers, and its own presenters, to try to claw back some of the money it paid Edwards.

Untouchable 'demigods'

"If it feels like we've been here before, that's probably because we have," said Rosa Silverman in The Daily Telegraph. Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall: Edwards is just the latest in a line of male BBC "talent" to have been guilty of horrible crimes.

Why is the BBC so scandal-prone? Insiders say it is partly due to a culture in which stars are treated as untouchable "demigods"; this means that if other employees do complain about them to senior managers, they are either ignored or driven out – creating deep-seated resentment.

Clearly, the BBC's management has a lot of work to do to rebuild trust, internally and externally, said Jane Martinson in The Observer. But to use this case as a stick with which to beat the BBC as a news provider would be wrong. Edwards was the public face of the BBC, often reading out stories prepared by others; but he was not its "beating heart".