BBC under fire over handling of presenter Huw Edwards scandal

Maybe this is the nature of silly seasons nowadays. They're becoming as extreme as the weather.

The fact is that, in the days when the name of the presenter was still unclear, owing to the privacy and defamation laws that apply in Britain, social media was full of speculation. So much so, that a number of presenters came forward to assert their innocence.

For a while, the public was treated to a long series of disavowals from people loudly declaring "I'm not Spartacus!" until one of these, Jeremy Vine, went further and called upon the presenter to, well, present himself, if only for the sake of his colleagues' good names.

Most of this was hardly edifying. A survey claimed that a sixth of the population already knew the name. People interviewed on the airwaves repeatedly tripped up when asked to comment.

The 'young person' was variously referred to as 'he' and 'they' in a kind of parody of the current nervousness regarding pronouns. And while the Sun newspaper kept mum, it gleefully implied that the nameless presenter had broken the law.

BBC investigation and cover-up?

The BBC began to investigate, then stopped when the police were brought in, and then resumed their investigation when the police found no case for prosecution.

At first, the BBC were praised for their fearless impartiality in covering the story. They were up against the Sun, so it's fair to say they were able to occupy the moral high ground unopposed and without a great deal of effort.

This was true for the entire period when the various names were being bandied about on social media. It was the case when the other presenters were earnestly denying it was them.

The scandal was a lesson, though, in how quickly an individual or organisation can surrender the high ground. As soon as the name was out, and even as the story was still being told on live television, there were fierce criticisms of the coverage.

For a moment we had the televisual equivalent of pop eating itself: the BBC became breaking news. Roger Bolton, a former BBC executive, lambasted the corporation on air for plugging away at the story. He has since criticised them in the Guardian.

Meanwhile, in almost the same instant, David Elstein – a former producer at the BBC – was speaking to Sophie Ridge on Sky News. He was incandescent at the coverage, asking in what country this treatment of people would be accepted practice, then answering his own question with (oddly enough) Romania.

When Ridge told him that the BBC had a 'unit' dealing with the investigation, he refused to believe such a unit could exist.

The British – though not necessarily Sun readers – have an affectionate way of referring to their public broadcaster as Auntie Beeb.

Here was a former bastion of that well-loved institution implying that it was now no better than the Romanian Broadcasting Corporation, or at the very least the Un-British Broadcasting Corporation, exactly as if Huw Edwards had not simply been traduced by the Sun without proper evidence, nor devoured by the Twitter mob with the kind of humane reluctance of any vulture, but stabbed in the back by his very own employer.  

It's fair to say that the Sun's behaviour would not have surprised any impartial observer. The tabloid of tabloids has never been a friend of the BBC.

We can now look forward to its televisual incarnation, TalkTV, airing a three-part interview with the young person's parents. For this, mum and step-dad will be paid handsomely, if past interviewees are anything to go by.

Antisocial media

The same lack of surprise applies to the 'antisocial media' as people have started calling it. In a recent lament for Twitter, Lois Beckett put it very well.

Calling her erstwhile favourite platform a 'failed state,' she complained that 'There had been neo-Nazis in the bar for a long time, and increasingly there were more of them, and it seemed likely... that the brownshirts would take over the place.'

Soon after Meta offered 'Threads' as harmonious birdsong compared to the squawking of the blue vulture, Elon Musk demonstrated his fitness for public consumption by informing the world that 'Zuck' (aka Mark Zuckerberg) was a 'cuck.'

Read more: Threads v Twitter: The mother of all battles

No, the surprise has been to see the BBC taken to task for equally unpleasant behaviour. We now learn that its journalists were investigating a rumour of 'inappropriate' behaviour even before the Sun broke its news.

A former employee, Jon Sopel, said he had "been struck by how many of my former BBC colleagues, some very senior, have been in touch to express their anger and dismay at their own coverage of this".

Sopel told ITV's "Good Morning Britain" that he had been in touch with Edwards since the story broke and the suspended presenter was "not overly impressed" with the BBC. I suppose a cynic might say, well he would say that, wouldn't he?

It was left to Alastair Campbell – once New Labour's Press Secretary and himself a depressive – to bemoan the excessive air time devoted to this whole issue when there were much bigger news stories out there than the possible death of one man's career.

That came soon after Edwards's wife, in a doomed attempt to disperse the crowds gathered around the tomb of the unnamed presenter, stated that her husband would one day give a statement to the public. For his own sake, I hope he delivers it on Zoom, from a sheep farm in Patagonia.