Huw Edwards: ‘Lots of questions for the BBC’ says Sunday Times media editor

We were joined by Rosamund Urwin who’s media editor at the Sunday Times.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: What do you think the questions are that aren’t answered yet?

Rosamund Urwin: There are a lot of questions for the BBC. Not least that they knew he was arrested in November, and yet they continued not only to employ him, but to keep paying him as their best paid journalist, their best paid newsreader, which will be very surprising to people. They’ve said that if they had known he had been charged, and obviously the charge happened after he left the BBC, so they weren’t made aware of him being charged. But they said if he’d been charged, then they would have dismissed him. But it’s not clear why that would make a difference, given that if they were not dismissing him because they were thinking innocent until proven guilty, a charge wouldn’t have taken them over that line either. So it’s unclear why they decided that they would wait until he was charged to do that. And obviously they have paid him very handsomely at a time in which he wasn’t working, the time of which, of course, also they’re making other journalists redundant. So the idea that he was getting an incredibly generous salary, not working, and on top of that had actually been arrested and they were aware of that, will be very shocking to people.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: I suppose the point of a charge means that it has crossed a certain threshold. It’s been examined by prosecutors and they believe there’s enough evidence and it’s in the public interest to prosecute. At the point of arrest… it could be anything couldn’t it? But are you really saying the BBC should have sacked him just on the point of arrest?

Rosamund Urwin: I think some people will certainly be arguing that. You’ve got to remember there were other complaints about his behaviour as well. Obviously, they may not have passed a criminal bar, they clearly didn’t so the police had ruled. But of course, we are all sacked for things if we act unprofessionally, you don’t have to pass a criminal bar. All of us in our contracts, if we’re on staff at news organisations, we’ll have a line about not bringing an organisation into disrepute. And you could have argued that Huw Edwards had already done that. So it isn’t that you need to wait until there’s a criminal allegation anyway, and a lot of the defenders of Huw Edwards originally were pointing out that it wasn’t clear originally, and obviously the police then decided that he hadn’t committed a criminal act in relation to the young person who The Sun reported that he’d received explicit images for. But of course you might still, without crossing a criminal bar, have been dragging an organisation into disrepute. And certainly there were other allegations to do with colleagues where they’d been made to feel uncomfortable. There was a body of evidence, and actually, I revealed in April in the Sunday Times that they’d actually had complaints about Huw Edwards two years earlier. The complaint had been withdrawn, but they had warned Huw Edwards twice about his misuse of social media and reminded them the BBC has very stringent guidelines about how staff behave on social media. Understandably, particularly people who are journalists. And so they could have been aware they were having an awful lot of problems already. So the idea that they had to wait, it will certainly seem odd to people.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: What about the question of whether anybody should have been informed after the BBC knew? The BBC has a duty to tell people the news, but also has a duty of care and can’t treat people as guilty until proven so. So were they right to sit on this information?

Rosamund Urwin: I would argue not. But of course, this isn’t about BBC editorial. They do have a line between the editorial and the corporate, so editorial wasn’t aware and there’s certainly BBC journalists who think they should have been made aware of this. But I think it is very problematic for the BBC that they have someone, they’re aware it’s a serious allegation. Obviously, they said they weren’t aware of quite the nature of them, that would have been the case. But they were aware of this complaint. They continued to pay him and then they let him leave on his own terms. So he claimed medical grounds in April. I looked over the statement that they put out, the sort of 55 word statement they put out when he left, and it was very clear it was his decision, it wasn’t theirs.