The Shift

Moving the parameters of the story and the definition of 'wrong-doing' is the only way the right-wing press ‘wins’ its one-sided war on Huw Edwards.

Previously: 10 more questions for The Sun about its 'BBC presenter' story.
News UK should answer. It won't.

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It’s possible to believe and justify three things at once in the Huw Edwards story:

1. The Sun has behaved disgustingly and has the journalistic ethics of a sewer rat wearing a little hat with a label reading press attached to it.

2. The request by Vicky Flind that her husband’s privacy and the privacy of all those involved in this story should be respected but absolutely won’t be by our feverish and demonic press.

3. Huw Edwards needs time to recover but must also account for the accusations of inappropriate workplace behaviour that have emerged from the BBC in the wake of The Sun’s now discredited reporting.

We are now in the midst of “the shift”: The Sun began by saying that the then-unnamed BBC presenter had committed a crime. It quickly started ‘walking back’ — an annoying hack term for trying to pretend you didn’t fuck up — from that claim before even the weekend was out.

Now the right-wing press aided by the masochistic BBC is shifting the story from the criminal to “the unseemly”, and encouraging readers and viewers to sneer, judge, and revel in their hypocrisy.

It seems — and I say seems because the evidence is so scant — that Edwards behaved at best in an unwise way and, at worst, in a manner that is professionally untenable.

On the basis of the detail thus far, he seems to have acted in a way that did not take into account his status and power within the BBC. Junior staff will fear and be unsettled by the attentions of powerful people who can affect their careers.

The problem comes when The Sun, The Times, The Dail Mail etc. and individuals like Rod Liddle (!!), Jeremy Kyle (!!!), Piers Morgan (!!!!), and Kelvin ‘that fucker’ McKenzie (!!!!!) being allowed to position themselves as moral arbiters.

Colleagues — and so-called friends — of Edwards, notably Jeremy Vine, have acted like witnesses called before Senator McCarthy at the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. But in Vine’s case, he practically volunteered to betray his friend and colleague, screaming that Edwards should name himself.

A common sneer on talk radio stations and across social media is that Edwards is ‘exploiting’ his mental health issues as a way to duck responsibility. That’s a cheap hit. He has been open about serious mental health issues in the past and mental health issues can — and often do — lead to unwise and seemingly unexplainable behaviour, especially around social boundaries and seeking comfort in places and from people you should not approach.

None of that absolves Edwards of the consequences of any inappropriate behaviour he may have been responsible for but it is more complicated than nasty sneering headlines about being “a family man”. Mental health, marriages, sexuality, status, and fame are all complex topics and more so when they come to interact but we have a media that speaks to grown adults as if they are still kids smashing together dolls and pretending that’s sex.

Is Edwards’ workplace conduct a story? No doubt. Was The Sun’s original story, with its hook of ‘concerned parents’ (estranged parents with an axe to grind) equally justified? Absolutely not.

The media is a mess and an industry where sexual inappropriateness, harassment, and abuse are routinely covered up, with victims — usually women — gagged with NDAs. The Edwards story is not even remotely the grimmest one I’ve heard recently and I’ll be reporting out the others very soon.

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