We have never doubted that our story on Huw Edwards was in the public interest
Parents who needed help
WE have never doubted that our story on Huw Edwards was in the public interest.
A desperate couple approached us with firm evidence that he was paying large sums to a young person with a spiralling drug addiction — and that the star had been sent sexual pictures.
The parents were at their wits’ end.
They wanted the payments to stop.
But police said nothing could be done and, despite a detailed complaint to the BBC, it did nothing either.
The couple sought no money from The Sun. They wanted help.
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What do our critics, especially Mr Edwards’ pious media friends, think we should have done?
Told the family to shove off?
Turned a blind eye to what appeared to be a clear abuse of power by a household name, even at the risk of this young person’s drug habit worsening?
The parents felt helpless and without a voice.
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We provided them with one.
Acutely aware of privacy restrictions, we took extreme care not to publish anything that could identify the presenter or the fragile youngster.
Mr Edwards was named only by his wife four days later, by which time several other young people had made troubling accusations against him.
We stand by our story and the voice it gave to two worried parents.
But the BBC, frantically circling the wagons around its top news presenter, has tried to remould it to attack The Sun.
It and its media supporters, sanctimonious haters of tabloids and The Sun especially, leapt on the police’s initial finding that no criminality had occurred and claimed the story thus had no public interest.
What self-serving duplicity.
Many of these same people have crucified political opponents for lesser sins with no hint of illegality.
Hypocrisy of tabloid haters
Had this story been about a Tory Cabinet Minister, or a Brexit-backing presenter on a right-leaning TV channel, they would be screaming for his sacking.
The hypocrisy doesn’t end there.
Wednesday’s BBC Newsnight attempted a hatchet-job on The Sun.
Yet its own reporters, to their credit, were probing allegations about Mr Edwards BEFORE our first story.
They clearly believed there was a public interest in them then.
And the results were revealed during this schizophrenic broadcast — as it interrupted its attack on us with claims from BBC colleagues that the star behaved inappropriately with them too.
Yesterday, in its continued confusion, it was both kicking The Sun AND giving the scandal blanket coverage.
It is the BBC with questions to answer.
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Here are three more: Since Newsnight was investigating Mr Edwards’ behaviour, who knew about it in the Corporation’s hierarchy? What was done about it?
And if some staff were too fearful about their careers to complain, what does that say about the BBC as a workplace?