Up to this point I have been loath to discuss the allegations surrounding a senior presenter at the BBC. For the most part that was because until we knew whether the police would be taking further action this was much more of a media story than a legal story.
A couple of things have since changed my mind.
The first is that the police have concluded that no criminal offence has been committed. If the reporting in The Sun had been true then this would not have been the case. That newspaper suggested in its initial story that the young woman was originally contacted when she was only 17 years old. As it slowly becomes apparent that this is not the case, serious questions have to be asked about how this was allowed to make it to the front page after going through editors and, presumably, a legal team.
At the very least this is poor and immoral journalism even by the standards of a newspaper that has a sordid history of poor and immoral journalism. The story was only based on the testimony of a single source: the estranged mother of the young woman. That young woman herself denied the central thrust of those allegations but instead The Sun claimed she was “crack-addicted” with, again, no evidence that that was true.
The decision of the police to not proceed any further alongside the revelation from Huw Edwards’ wife that the presenter is in hospital suffering with serious mental health issues all mean that The Sun is potentially in serious legal trouble.
Spokespeople for the newspaper are backpedalling harder and faster than anyone in recorded human history has before. They say that they did not allege criminality and took the decision not to name Huw Edwards. The Sun might not have done this directly but that is certainly the implication behind the reporting. Interestingly Edwards recently liked a Tweet by fellow journalist Jon Sopel who said:
“.@TheSun has made the most serious allegations about a BBC presenter. Now needs to provide evidence or potentially face the mother of all libel actions”
The courts will have to examine the merits of a case but the more we learn, the more this looks like a fishing expedition gone wrong by journalists at The Sun. Given the nature of the allegations as well as the emotional, reputational and professional damage they have done, there could be an eye-watering payout to Edwards and the young woman.
The other thing that prompted me to write about this story is the disturbing comments by a fellow Substack writer and legal commentator.