- Gafoor gaffe - 22nd October 2024
- Death duties - 21st October 2024
- A U turn - 18th October 2024
During 23 years with The BBC, and a 41 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry has frequently upset people by refusing to go with the flow, when he has uncovered worrying details about famous individuals, and this is now underlined by more information coming to light about Alex Salmond who was lauded after his recent death.
Some people hate my guts, and it isn’t simply because of the many miscarriage of justice programmes I have presented over the years.
I know I became the spawn of the devil to a murder victim’s friends and family; it was almost as though they wanted ANYONE banged up, even if it was the wrong person.
I have never understood this!
There is also a pervasive attitude that you should not criticise certain revered individuals (even if they have dubious backgrounds), and I have always found that extremely corrosive because it goes against everything that journalism is about.
A case in point was Huw Edwards.
I refused to join in the adulation of a ‘Welshman done good in London‘, and his pedophilia crimes have now been exposed.
Let’s re-cap – Edwards was suspended from his job reading the news at The BBC in July 2023 after reports in The Sun said he had paid a young person for sexually explicit images.
He is now serving a six month jail sentence, suspended for two years. His admission of what he did made the front page of almost every single UK newspaper.
Edwards possessed moving images of a child aged between seven and nine, and he 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.
He was, though, a hero to some in official bodies, as well as people in the Welsh nationalist and independence communities.
Edwards was honoured by the Gorsedd and given honorary degrees by the universities of Bangor as well as Cardiff, while his erstwhile employer (The BBC) continued to pay him thousands of pounds even though it KNEW he’d been arrested for downloading pornographic photographs of children.
Yet even after his crimes came to light, Gorsedd recorder Christine James merely said the issue would be ‘discussed’ when it met, and that it did “not have a process or a specified mechanism to expel members”.
University managers said only that the situation would be ‘reviewed’ and BBC Director General (DG) Tim Davie defended their handling of it all.
Even before his behaviour was exposed, there were worrying signs of a man who did not appear to believe that regulations applied to him.
Edwards had ‘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 unlike The Eye) 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”.
Another was the Welsh former lobbyist Daran Hill, who was often on our television screens.
I always knew there was something dodgy about him (although I didn’t know the extent of his pedophilia crimes), so when he called me a “misogynist” on social media (which was, incidentally, MISSPELT) I resolved to do something about it.
I went straight to my libel lawyer and threatened to sue him; a fulsome apology was then forthcoming.
Subsequently it has emerged that he had 62 indecent images, among them eight in the most serious category after being arrested by the National Crime Agency (NCA) in 2021.
This was the opening sentence in the website WalesOnline’s (WO) report about his imprisonment: “A paedophile who used to work as a top political consultant distributed sickening images of child abuse as young as three years old to others on the internet”.
As this item makes clear, Hill shared many of the images with other users on a social messaging platform, and even after admitting his crimes, he was jailed for three years and four months, with only half of this heavy sentence (a reflection of how seriously this is viewed) to be served on licence.
All of this has been highlighted for me after the death of Alex Salmond.
He was presented as a cross between Billy Connolly, Robert the Bruce as well as William Wallace, and talk of a statue to him immediately began to circulate online.
Mr Salmond’s coffin, flown from North Macedonia, was greeted by members of his family, new Alba Party leader Kenny MacAskill and a lone piper.
The private plane which carried it was paid for by Scottish businessman and philanthropist Sir Tom Hunter, while a group of ‘Yes’ bikers led the cortège as it headed for Fraserburgh.
The Welsh independence organisation YesCymru (YC) lauded Mr Salmond, proclaiming: “YesCymru pays tribute to Alex Salmond, a visionary leader (dedicated) to the cause of Scottish independence…”.
But now, it appears, media organisations, as well as others, are focusing on other unsavoury elements of Mr Salmond’s past, while the background of those that have praised him are being looked at afresh.
The Economist has reported: “…his failures, both personal and political, shrivelled his own reputation and reduced that of his party“.
Mr Salmond was acquitted of serious sexual offences in a trial in 2020 but his name was badly tarnished as a result; his own defence counsel told the jury that they wouldn’t have been there if Mr Salmond had been “a better man”, and it’s been reported that he also said that his client was a bully and a “sex pest”.
YC have admitted that members had themselves been exposed to intolerable harassment (perhaps echoing allegations about Mr Salmond) which “went far beyond social media posts”.
The email announcing this continued: “The members of the Central Committee of YesCymru have collectively resigned and stood down from their roles with immediate effect…The announcement comes with the opportunity to enable a new Central Committee to be elected at a forthcoming Extraordinary General Meeting”.
More details are also now likely to emerge about Mr Salmond’s treatment of women, and, as elsewhere, he has also been described as a ‘bully’ in The Times.
It declared as well: “…this was a deeply flawed character with egomaniac tendencies…his ego was out of control”.
His media appearances, too, have proved controversial.
Mr Salmond presented a show on RT (Russia Today), which is effectively a mouthpiece for Vladimir Putin.
He carried on hosting it even after the Salisbury poisonings, when he announced there was ‘insufficient evidence’ that the Kremlin was responsible.
So remember – stop and think before you say how wonderful someone is.
Details of past behaviour may come back to haunt you…
The memories of Phil’s extraordinary decades long award-winning career in journalism (when he refused to join in the adulation of ‘revered’ individuals) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
Tomorrow – the huge condemnation of plans to release the Lynette White murderer, by those wrongly convicted after a flawed police investigation, and how it highlights the appalling behaviour by Wales’ biggest force.
