In trying to make sense of Edwards’ story, “it’s important to remember that The Sun is part of the Murdoch empire, which has long hated the BBC, part commercial and part ideological,” said Steven Barnett, professor of communications. . at the University of Westminster in London, who has worked in the industry for over three decades.
Murdoch’s Sun is Britain’s most widely read news brand with some 30 million monthly readers in print and online. It has also become one of the most controversial forces in public life, feared by prime ministers, trusted by celebrities, and hated by many non-readers.
While Barnett said that The Sun had based its exclusive on “very, very weak evidence”, some in the industry have defended the paper.
Journalists who “hold others to account for their behavior need to be prepared to hold others accountable for their behavior.” his behavior,” said Adam Boulton, a veteran former correspondent for Sky News, a UK partner of NBC News.
“There have been many people whose careers have ended,” not because they broke the law, but because they “brought down” their employer. told Sky News On Wednesday.
(Before NBC News’ parent group Comcast bought Sky News in 2018, it was 39% owned by Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox.)
The Sun broke its story last Friday about an unidentified TV personality who paid thousands of pounds for sexual images of a young person, financing his crack addiction. The source was the mother of the alleged victim, who said that her son was now 20 years old but that the payments had been made “since she was 17”.
Although the age of consent is 16 in the UK, it is illegal to possess “indecent images” of anyone under the age of 18.
Edwards, a church-going Christian with five children, quickly became a trend on social media. And his wife, Vicky Flind, confirmed his identity on Wednesday, saying in a statement that the episode had caused him “serious mental health problems” and that he had been hospitalized “for the foreseeable future.”
The original narrative presented by The Sun was soon called into question. The young man’s lawyer said in a statement Monday that the claims made by his family were “garbage” and that “nothing inappropriate or illegal” had happened. London’s Metropolitan Police announced Wednesday that there was no evidence of a crime.
The story was increasingly resembling a family feud: “rumors from the parents of an adult child, denying what the parents say,” said Barnett, the communication professor.
A former editor of The Sun, David Yelland, tweeted on wednesday that the newspaper had “inflicted terror on Huw” and that “this is no longer a BBC crisis, it is a newspaper crisis”.
Soon, #NewsoftheWorld was trending on Twitter, equating the crisis with The Sun’s sister newspaper, which shut down in 2011 after it was found to be hacking the phones of celebrities and crime victims.
The Sun has no regrets.
The story was always “about two very concerned and frustrated parents who made a complaint to the BBC about the behavior” of a presenter “and payments from him that fueled a young man’s drug habit,” a spokesperson said in a statement. send by email.
The newspaper “at no point in our original story did it allege criminality,” the statement added, declining to explain how this squared with its report that the youth was 17 when the payments began.
NBC News has not confirmed any of The Sun’s reports. And no details about the family have been released, so it was not possible to ask them for comment.
The BBC is now carrying out an investigation, including into new allegations. The Sun reported that Edwards broke coronavirus lockdown restrictions in 2021 to meet someone from a dating app. And the BBC reported that two current employees and one former employee had received “abusive messages” from him.
The broadcaster is investigating “calmly, carefully and diligently, with full consideration of our duty to care for all involved,” a BBC spokesperson said.
But the spokesman declined to comment on the criticism of the BBC itself.
To some on the right, it’s a taxpayer-funded giant slow to act on allegations against top talent. Looms the specter of Jimmy Savile, the BBC animator who was revealed by the BBC’s rivals to have been a serial sexual abuser after his death in 2011.
But these familiar critics are joined by others who believe the BBC overcompensated, giving the Edwards story mainstream coverage that no commercial rival would.
“BBC journalists were desperate to demonstrate their independence from the BBC administration,” Barnett said. “They have done everything possible, not only to cover the story and repeat the allegations, but also to try to find their own evidence of wrongdoing.”
