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- Trendy - 18th November 2024
Enormous internal criticism has followed the slowness of official bodies in taking action against disgraced former newsreader Huw Edwards, who was found with dozens of pictures of children including one of a young child, possibly aged between seven and nine years old.
For instance this week authorities at the Eisteddfod finally expelled Edwards from the Gorsedd of the Bards – one of the highest accolades in Welsh public life.
However this was a week after he had formally admitted the awful practice in Westminster Magistrates’ Court, and even now there is a delay – Edwards has 21 days to appeal the decision and will not be removed until then. The board said it had activated a relevant section of its constitution to remove him.
Earlier, the Gorsedd recorder, or secretary, Christine James had said the issue would be ‘discussed’ when it met, and that it “does not have a process or a specified mechanism to expel members”. In a statement yesterday, Ms James stated: “In such matters, the Gorsedd is subject to the Eisteddfod Court”.
The pace of these events has provoked fury from within the Eisteddfod. One whistleblower who is close to senior management, declared in Welsh to The Eye: “This is unbelievable. Haven’t these people heard of telephones or conference calls?!”. It was proclaimed earlier: “Oh for God’s sake! The managers really are IDIOTS! People don’t care about ‘processes’, just that they have honoured a paedophile. if there is no process for getting rid of people, we need a new one. The current situation is bad for the Eisteddfod, and bad for Wales”.
Apart from moving images of a child aged between seven and nine, Edwards had 41 photographs – seven category A images, 12 category B pictures, and 22 category C. The category A images – the most serious kind – were mostly of children aged 13 to 15.
Meanwhile the contentious Director General (DG) of the BBC Tim Davie has defended his corporation’s handling of the controversy, when it paid Edwards hundreds of thousands of pounds even though it knew he had been arrested on child pornography charges.
The BBC were also to keep the BAFTAs won for Royal coverage fronted by Edwards, and individual awards he received would ‘remain under review’
Apart from being honoured by the Gorsedd, Edwards was also given honorary degrees by the universities of Bangor as well as Cardiff.
Cardiff University (CU) said after the guilty plea it was only “actively reviewing procedures in relation to the honorary fellowship award and his position as an honorary professor”.
Bangor University (BU) also announced that it was merely ‘reviewing’ the honorary fellowship it had granted Edwards, and The Learned Society of Wales (LSW) said, too, that it was ‘reviewing’ his fellowship in the wake of his guilty plea. The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Swansea University (SU) have said they were not able to comment..
All of this has come despite whistleblowers condemning executives. One said they were “disappointed” not to have heard more about an internal inquiry’s progress, a further critic said that it felt like “things have been swept under the carpet”.
The background is extraordinary. On a different issue, Edwards was suspended in July 2023 after reports in The Sun said he had paid a young person for sexually explicit images. These condemnatory remarks are in the wake of what is now known about him. His admission of what he did made the front page of almost every single UK newspaper.
There has also been consternation about why he was a hero to some in the Welsh nationalist or independence communities. One leading Public Relations (PR) and marketing executive who wished to remain anonymous, told The Eye: “It has always seemed incredible to me, and now this just emphasises it. In the past we have even had Welsh nationalist or independence clients wanting to put Huw Edwards’ face on their products!”.
In one announcement on Twitter/X Edwards highlighted (ironically): “The wacky world where Wales was never a nation and Pembrokeshire is the heartland of… Plaid Cymru. Help!”. The picture he attached underneath it, was of protesters carrying Welsh flags aloft with a placard of END LONDON RULE clearly visible near the centre of the photograph.
He was ordered to drop a post of himself in front of a Welsh flag, which he proclaimed (once more ironically) was a “backdrop for @BBCNews at Ten”, and responded (again ironically): “Gutted my pro-flag tweet has been cut down in its prime. By order. But it will be back tomorrow – by popular demand. Meanwhile enjoy this magnificent flag – one of my favourites. Hashtag SixNationsRugby Hashtag FRAvWAL” – with a series of emojis included.
His comments, though, have not been met with wild acclaim by the leader of the Welsh Conservatives in the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru (WP/SC) Andrew RT Davies, who has said on Twitter/X that The BBC was: “Employing presenters who openly mock… (Britain)… Ridiculous!”, and linked it to the ‘Gutted’ post.
He has ‘liked’ a tweet declaring that he should be “President of an Independent Cymru”, apparently flying in the face of the rules on impartiality, and there was also a call on the internet for Edwards to be knighted because of his presentation of a Royal funeral.
He attacked a critique of the break-up of the UK by celebrated historian and journalist Max Hastings. Edwards tweeted that there were “errors”. After Edwards’ diatribe opposing Mr Hastings, the website Nation.Cymru (NC) (which is supported by the taxpayer) published a ‘news’ piece saying: “Huw Edwards slams former Telegraph editor for anti-Welsh language article”, and it has ‘reported’ many ‘stories’ about his exploits. For example, following a remark about Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru (Plaid), it ran a ‘story’ that: “Broadcaster Huw Edwards has protested the BBC’s new rules on using social media by unleashing a cascade of Welsh flags”.
The exposure of Edwards caused a huge storm when it emerged that he had been paid between £475,000 and £479,999 in the 2023-24 financial year, making him the broadcaster’s third-highest-paid presenter overall.
Only now has he been ASKED to give some of it back. In a letter to staff the BBC Chair Samir Shah said that Edwards had “behaved in bad faith” (surely an under-statement!), saying that the corporation believed he had taken his salary despite knowing he was to plead guilty to the offences.
Edwards, formerly the BBC’s most high-profile newsreader, continued to earn his salary for FIVE months after he was arrested on three counts of making indecent images of children, during which time he was paid more than £200,000.
He had allegedly given £35,000 to a teenager in exchange for the sexually explicit images, and when he was finally ‘outed’ by his wife a news item about it stated: “Vicky Flind, the wife of news reader Huw Edwards, has named him as the BBC presenter facing allegations over payments for sexually explicit images in a statement issued on his behalf”.
Harmful claims then emerged about Edwards’ actions generally at the BBC, with it being claimed that he had sent ‘menacing’ texts to one individual, and further allegations emerged following the original ones made in The Sun (the paper said it had a dossier of his alleged activities, but has chosen not to publish).
He was also accused of sending inappropriate messages to BBC employees. According to Newsnight, one current staff member claimed they were contacted on social media by him, and the messages left them feeling uncomfortable as well as awkward. The messages were reportedly suggestive in nature, appeared to be flirtatious, and referred to the appearance of Mr Edwards’ colleague. “There is a power dynamic that makes this inappropriate”, the staff member said. Another BBC employee alleged that Mr Edwards had also sent them a private message on social media which commented, too, on their appearance and gave them a “cold shudder”.
During the days in which Edwards went unnamed as the presenter at the centre of the alleged sex scandal, the publicist and strategist Mark Berkowski told Times Radio: “We’ve got a situation where it’s an ongoing car crash and the BBC is so glacial about how they’re dealing with this, because this is a 21st century problem”, David Keighley, the former BBC news producer and director of News-watch, spoke of “reputational damage” to the man’s colleagues.
Journalists who covered the extraordinary incident, have apparently endorsed criticism that the BBC effectively clammed up about it. For instance, one Sky News journalist said at the time: “The fact all of us broadcasters have asked, have put in requests again and again to speak to the director general, and the fact that he has only given an interview to his own people is not a good look for the BBC”.
Yet senior executives seemingly took a different view. During a pre-arranged House of Lords (HoL) Communications Committee (CC) hearing about a week afterwards, the BBC’s Mr Davie, said: “We have been in touch with the complainant”, and that due to the “history of this industry… we should all be concerned and appropriately diligent around the abuse of people in powerful positions”.
As the Edwards scandal comes hard on the heels of the Gary Lineker controversy, Mr Davie’s position now looks increasingly untenable.
In that hearing he sat alongside acting chairwoman, Dame Elan Closs Stephens (who, like Edwards, is from Wales). She and Mr Davie were forced to answer important questions about the corporation’s attitude during the affair, following suggestions that it did not properly investigate the original complaint. Dame Elan told peers that despite “huge pressure”to name Edwards, the corporation “had a duty to act with some calm and rationality in the face of lack of rationality and lack of calm”. She was BBC chair for almost all of the period in question.
A spoof mock up of a former BBC logo which circulated on the internet may not have been accurate, but showed the depths the corporation’s reputation sank to in the eyes of the public. It said: “BBC – Blokes Bumming Children”.
Indeed the reputation of many organisations seems to have sunk in the eyes of the public, if one has only just stripped a man of an honour, after he admitted a week ago child pornography charges, and others are only ‘reviewing’ the situation…
The memories of our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry’s, extraordinary decades long award-winning 