Edwards situation ‘truly shocking’ but BBC can’t be blamed says former presenter

Krishnan Guru-Murthy speaks to Roger Bolton, a former BBC executive and presenter who launched and presents the Beeb Watch podcast.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Clearly Huw Edwards has behaved appallingly. Has the BBC done anything wrong?

Roger Bolton: Well, he has behaved appallingly. I don’t think it could be expected to know what went on in the mind of Huw Edwards. It is truly shocking. It’s appalling. But it’s difficult to look into people’s souls. So I don’t think there’s any suggestion that Huw Edwards’ family or anybody worked with him or anybody like that, other than those he was corresponding with, knew about his interest in child sex. I don’t think you can blame them for that.

What you can ask is, he started to have real periods of depression. In 2020, there was evidence of alcohol abuse and whatever. Who was looking after him and who was looking after the staff, because there was some staff in the BBC who felt that he was, if not pursuing them, sending them unwelcome messages. So the offence, the BBC couldn’t have guessed that was what it was about. There are questions about how it monitors stars like Huw Edwards.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So that’s, sort of, a safeguarding issue is it for staff?

Roger Bolton: Well, I think there is an industry-wide problem, which is you’ve got lots of young people on short-term contracts and they’ve got to have the confidence, if somebody in power, and it’s a power issue, starts to make unwelcome…pursues them in an unwelcome manner. They’ve got to feel that they can appeal to their management without them, you know, paying a price as opposed to the presenter. So I think it’s a question for the industry as a whole, where I think on the whole, stars are too powerful and the staff are not powerful enough.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Well, there’s another BBC review into workplace culture.

Roger Bolton: Yeah, well there’s always at the BBC.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: There is always a review and they are internal and, I mean, what is the point of them if they are like… do you need external monitoring of an organisation like the BBC and other broadcasters?

Roger Bolton: In the end, what you need is executive producers, commissioning editors and others to say very clearly to stars that they cannot behave in a certain way and make sure that the people who work for them, in particular the least powerful and I would say particularly women, because it’s usually women involved in these circumstances, are empowered to complain and to have their complaints taken seriously.

But there is not any suggestion that the BBC is full to the brim of paedophiles or in any way condones the sort of thing that Huw Edwards has been doing, which is entirely wrong. The other thing which came out in your report, which is deeply disturbing, is this child sex problem is much wider than we thought. And I think we need to make sure we examine that and look at this, because Huw Edwards is not the only person in a prominent position who probably is interested in these sorts of things.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Indeed in the nature of the images, they said some of them are made, in fact, by the victims.

Roger Bolton: You see you’ve got this confusion. I mean, for example, in Germany, you have the age of consent is 14, Italy is 14. Across the continent, there are different ages of consent. And of course, now with the Internet, and so on, anybody can almost access anything. That puts a real responsibility on employees to make sure that their most powerful employees are not abusing the system.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But can you? You said the BBC is not full of these kinds of people, but it’s fighting reputational battles on a number of fronts, with a number of different presenters, from different parts of the BBC, some of which are in court, some aren’t.

Roger Bolton: They are. But it’s the biggest British broadcaster and a lot of the problems relate to independent companies. This is industry wide. You could quote we won’t, cases in ITV in the past of inappropriate behaviour. There’s plenty around. But I think the crucial thing is, do young people have – can they have – the courage, can they have the knowledge that if they complain, things will be dealt with? And I think, presenters, broadcasters, have got to say no star is essential. You’ve got to be able to say to them, okay, if you want to behave like that or if you want to strut around whatever, you don’t work for us.

Clarification: In an earlier version of this report, it was stated in the interview that the age of consent in Nigeria was 11. In fact,  it is 18.