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The man who was once the most trusted and most recognisable face of BBC journalism has pleaded guilty over images that show child sexual abuse – and the BBC has serious questions to answer.
The director general faces some stark and uncomfortable truths.
Most difficult to explain is why the BBC continued to pay Huw Edwards his vast salary for five months after he had been arrested. Edwards resigned in April citing medical advice.
The BBC said in its statement that if Edwards had been charged, it would have acted. It’s true that a charge would have indicated prosecutors believed they had the evidence to convict. Edwards wasn’t charged until after he had resigned.
But for many, his guilty pleas on Wednesday make it difficult to justify those months paying out a total of more than £200,000 of public money to the now former presenter of News at Ten and the lead presenter on so many landmark moments for the nation.
At the time of his arrest, Edwards had already been off air since July 2023, after the Sun newspaper had published claims he had paid a young person for sexually explicit images. Police found no evidence of criminal behaviour in relation to this and the current court case is unrelated.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has called an urgent meeting with the director general following Edwards’ admission of guilt.
This is yet another sign of the pressure on the corporation over its handling of the situation.
One of the questions the government wants answering is about the use of taxpayers’ money in this way, as well as when decisions were taken and by whom.
Why didn’t the BBC sack Edwards, in light of his arrest, instead of giving him the space to leave, apparently on his own terms, albeit with no pay off?
There will have only been a handful of people in the room where these conversations were taking place.
The benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing. The decisions they took can’t have been easy and they will have been weighing up different scenarios – and competing advice.
Imagine a situation in which an employee is sacked after being arrested on serious charges. Imagine then that they are found not guilty.
Or imagine something worse; for an employee struggling with severe mental health problems and in a very vulnerable state.
Where would an employer stand then?
Senior HR and legal advisors will have advised the BBC it had a duty of care towards Edwards as an employee. They will likely also have said he would have a legal case against the corporation if he was sacked unfairly. The BBC says it was made aware of “significant risk to his health”.
But it is difficult to see this specifically through an HR or legal prism.
In the end, this was a judgement call for the people at the very top of the BBC and the optics are reputationally damaging. The BBC spent taxpayers’ money on a man now guilty of serious offences.
Many people will believe the corporation made the wrong judgement.
There is an added dimension to the story. Did the corporation also have a duty to its audiences to inform the public about the arrest, rather than sit on the information?
This too is complex, especially when it concerns an employee struggling with his mental health. People who are arrested do have an expectation of a right to privacy. In certain cases, privacy can be outweighed by arguments around what’s in the public interest.
It’s important to note that BBC News, where I’m employed, is editorially independent from the corporate side. We didn’t know about the arrest or charges until earlier this week when the story broke.
Our job is to hold organisations to account, on behalf of the public – and that includes the BBC. We have had the freedom to cover the story without fear or favour throughout.
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