As Huw Edwards pleads guilty to child sex charges, the mind-boggling hypocrisy of the well-paid liberal podcastariat has already been well noted. The well-heeled and right-on steamed in to defend their centrist buddy – but Edwards has today admitted to three counts of making indecent images of children…
Anti-press Hacked Off, which describes itself as a ‘campaign for a free and accountable press‘, also played a key role mixing the cards and sending up chaff on the Huw Edwards scandal – it ran a relentless campaign criticising the original reports which appeared in The Sun, seeking to discredit the story. In July last year Hacked Off released a statement from its director Nathan Sparkes which read:
“A man has been hospitalised, his family has been destroyed, a young person has seen their drug addiction issue and family estrangement splashed across the newspapers for the world to pick over. Whatever further emerges in this story, and if The Sun has further public interest justifications or evidence of genuine wrongdoing they are hiding it very well, this episode demonstrates the extraordinary power the press has inflict harm against people, and underlines the urgent need for an independent system of regulation as recommended in the Leveson Report”.
Hacked Off went onto say elsewhere that The Sun:
“Failed to follow very basic journalistic standards in pursuit of this story”.
The group prayed in aid the support of Peter Tatchell, who chimed in:
“The presumption of innocence until proven guilty has been thrown out the window… Unless a criminal offence has been committed or the young person has complained, it is a private matter and no one else’s business… [The Sun] is aghast that a BBC presenter allegedly paid a young man thousands of pounds for allegedly sexually explicit photos. But for decades that newspaper made millions in profits publishing sexually explicit photos of young women on page three.”
The BBC then quoted Hacked Off in a piece critical of The Sun‘s reporting:
“Jacqui Hames, a board member of press campaign group Hacked Off, said a “suggestion of criminality… screamed out” at readers day after day.”
Set that against Edwards’s own admissions in court. With the luvvie-backed group lobbying Starmer’s government hard for Leveson 2, this should weaken their argument. Press regulation campaigners are so often really just anti-press…
Yesterday was a tough today for the hardline centrist hacks who rushed to Huw Edwards’ defence after allegations he paid a child for indecent images surfaced. As the Metropolitan Police confirmed BBC presenter Huw Edwards was charged with three accounts of making explicit photos, the lefty pundits look rather silly for slamming The Sun for surfacing the scandal and running to Huw’s defence. Guido has browsed through the archives of these supposed ‘hommes serieux’ who will be more than a little red-faced…
The questions for The Sun just got bigger still.
— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) July 12, 2023
Former Editor of The Sun, David Yelland rushed to attack the paper, posting this a few hours after Huw’s wife named him as the presenter embroiled in scandal:
I wish @thehuwedwards well. The Sun inflicted terror on Huw despite no evidence of any criminal offence. This is no longer a BBC crisis, it is a crisis for the paper. Huw’s privacy must now be respected. Social media also needs speedy reform.
— David Yelland (@davidyelland) July 12, 2023
Emily Maitlis also blasted the “distasteful” BBC coverage of further allegations coming to light, questioning on The News Agents whether journalism had gone “too far” while “this poor man was in hospital, and that was absolutely appalling, and yet obviously there will be journalists here saying “but that doesn’t stop us doing our work”. Let’s not forget that the child’s mother initially approached the BBC to report the disturbing situation and she was met with silence…
Meanwhile, Jon Sopel was quick to wish Huw well:
This is an awful and shocking episode, where there was no criminality, but perhaps a complicated private life. That doesn’t feel very private now. I hope that will give some cause to reflect. They really need to. I wish @thehuwedwards well. pic.twitter.com/H3rN3bhE1U
— Jon Sopel (@jonsopel) July 12, 2023
Last but not least, Corbynite luvvie Owen Jones posted a moving defence that hasn’t aged well:
The Sun is a disgusting rag and they have to pay for what they’ve done to Huw Edwards.
They tried to destroy someone’s life with false claims of illegality involving a minor.
We know now there was no criminality, and The Sun have driven a vulnerable man into medical care.
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) July 12, 2023
They’re not leaping to his aid anymore…
Former BBC presenter Huw Edwards has been charged with three counts of making indecent images of children on WhatsApp. The Metropolitan Police released the following statement:
“The offences, which are alleged to have taken place between December 2020 and April 2022, relate to images shared on a WhatsApp chat. Edwards was arrested on 8 November 2023. He was charged on Wednesday, 26 June following authorisation from the Crown Prosecution Service. He has been bailed to appear at Westminster magistrates’ court on Wednesday, 31 July. Media and the public are strongly reminded that this is an active case. Nothing should be published, including on social media, which could prejudice future court proceedings.”
Huw still managed to rake in a whopping £480,000 (a 10% pay rise) from the BBC last year – despite not doing much work since he was outed as the presenter facing allegations of paying for explicit pictures last July. All very ugly for the BBC…
The BBC has just revealed further details of the story everyone is talking about – BBC presenter salaries. It’s been another good year for Huw Edwards, who’s clocked in a nice 10% pay rise and is the third-highest paid presenter. In fact it’s a score of pay rises is on the board all as the BBC loses viewers, slashes Newsnight, and complains that it is cash-strapped. Gary Lineker remains the corporation’s highest earner, on £1,354,999…
Nick Robinson, John Kay, and Reeta Chakrabarti have scored some of the cosiest rises. Here are the highest-earning politicos, and others:
Today
World at One
PM
BBC News at One, Six and Ten
Question Time
Newsnight
BBC Breakfast
Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg
On-air editors and correspondents
Non-politics or news
While the BBC rants on about equality and diversity its gender wage gap has actually widened by about a percentage point when measured both in mean and median pay. Co-conspirators can read the full report here. An absolute joke for hard pressed licence fee payers…
Viewers voted with their remotes on election night, sending the BBC’s viewing numbers plummeting by 2 million compared to the last general election. The air of smug satisfaction may have prompted a few to switch off…
From 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., the BBC mustered 4.1 million viewers, a sharp drop from the 6.1 million of 2019. Even Clive Myrie’s hard-hitting questions to Angela Rayner on why she won’t “count the chickens” or at least “what kind of chickens would [she] like to see” failed to maintain interest. The BBC’s woes aren’t helped by the licence fee’s unpopularity – a 2023 poll by Techne UK revealed that 53% think people shouldn’t have to pay the fee. Not even a warm embrace from Labour seems capable of hoisting the BBC out of its ratings slump…
In a heated exchange between the two leaders, Sunak pushed Starmer on what he would do with the illegal migrants coming into the UK. Sunak pointed to his Rwanda plan, repeatedly asking Starmer “what will you do with them?”. Starmer’s response was a mere“we will process them”. Noting that “these people come from Iran, Syria and Afghanistan”, Sunak responded:
“Are you going to sit down with the Iranian Ayatollahs? … To try and do a deal with the Taliban? It’s completely nonsensical what you’re saying. You’re taking people for fools.”
Cue huge applause from the audience…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”