Individuals have been damaged in the handling of the BBC presenter row. But so has British journalism
By summer’s end, the BBC presenter manhunt will seem an even stranger news storm than it already does. In the wider world, the past few days have in reality been dominated by terrifying global climate crisis incidents, a crunch wartime summit on Ukraine, an international row about cluster munitions, and a host of bad domestic British economic news. Yet throughout that period, most British newspapers, and almost every BBC news bulletin, have been focused on following the Sun’s 8 July front page story alleging payments by a star BBC presenter to a teen for sexual photos.
In an echo of the furore over the ITV presenter Phillip Schofield in May, the BBC story has all but obliterated the normal news values of many outlets. On Wednesday, the pursuit culminated with the naming, by his wife, of Huw Edwards, the BBC’s senior news presenter. As a result, a lot of air has already quickly gone out of what is suddenly a much less prominent news story. Yet the serious consequences remain.
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