The disgraceful BBC

[tango15]

I found myself watching Newsnight last night, something I haven't watched for years. What have they done with Kirsty Wark? Has she been kidnapped and held to ransom? They had Joshua Rozenberg - formerly the BBC's legal correspondent - in the studio discussing the accusations, which at that time had just become three. He suggested that the person at the centre of the controversy should hold a press conference, which I thought for a man of his background was a rather strange thing to say.
Nevertheless, as a journalist/correspondent, it must be a very strange experience to sit in front of the cameras knowing full well who it is, but unable to say anything.

[Pontius Navigator]

Well that's that then, Jeremy Vine f****d and the Current Bun too.

Tim Davie has hold of a slippery and smelly stick too and a long holiday while he considers his options might be on the cards.

[OneHungLow]

The time it took the Met police to reach their assessment no criminal offence had been committed was relatively rapid.

A detective met virtually with the BBC on Monday lunchtime.

Barely 48 hours later Britain’s biggest police force was confident enough to declare that whatever happened , it was not a matter for them.

The Met is the second police force to look at the alleged contact between the BBC presenter and youth and decide it did not amount to a crime.

South Wales Police have said they assessed material in April and reached the same decision as the Met Police.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/ ... atest-news

[Boac]

I feel so sorry for his wife and family, and her statement was admirable. All very sad for all involved.

What I find very puzzling is that it has been said that he did not 'know' about all this furore until Thursday?

[Pontius Navigator]

What I find very puzzling is that it has been said that he did not 'know' about all this furore until Thursday?

Agree. Very much a vendetta by the Sun with presumably no pre warning to him.

As I said, I think there will be a lot of Hu Flung Dun involved. Jon Sopel behaved impeccably but I think Jeremy not so well

[G-CPTN]

Wearing women's clothing is not against the law as far as I believe.

That might seem like thread drift, but I believe the aberration highlighted in this case might be considered similar.

[tango15]

I feel so sorry for his wife and family, and her statement was admirable. All very sad for all involved.

What I find very puzzling is that it has been said that he did not 'know' about all this furore until Thursday?

I am now wondering whether his mental health is considerably worse than is being mentioned. I remember reading his Wikipedia pages a few days ago, which made reference to this. What surprises me is that in more recent times he has fronted the Queen's Funeral, The Trooping of The Colour, and the King's Coronation, yet he is said to have been suffering for many years. Surely the pressure of having to deal with all that would have put him - or anyone else for that matter - under considerable mental strain.
I foresee some editorial changes at The Sun, plus a bonus for m'learned friends, who are invariably the winners in such situations. And to think that, as a callow youth in my early 20s, I was offered the opportunity to study law, but I thought it was boring!

[Pontius Navigator]

T15, quite. I do wonder about Vine. Whilst purporting to be a friend he demonstrated complete failure of empathy. Jon Sopel otoh was far more understanding.

[OneHungLow]

I hope that cesspit called The Sun and its degenerate staff of gutter turds are skewered for this travesty...

The Sun has faced many big controversies in its time. The tabloid’s reporting on Huw Edwards could soon be added to that list.

Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper is facing serious questions over its reporting and ethical standards, after it alleged Edwards paid a 17-year-old for explicit images – only for police to conclude there was no evidence to support this allegation of serious criminal wrongdoing.

Days later, his wife said Edwards is in a hospital dealing with “serious mental health issues” and the newspaper is rapidly backtracking on its original story. Extraordinarily, on Wednesday night the Sun insisted its initial claim that the presenter had given a young person “more than £35,000 since they were 17 in return for sordid images” was not a suggestion of criminal activity.

Instead, the newspaper blamed other media outlets for misinterpreting its reporting and leading to the police getting involved, saying: “We must also re-emphasise that the Sun at no point in our original story alleged criminality and also took the decision neither to name Mr Edwards nor the young person involved in the allegations.”

Even before the police had cleared Edwards of illegal behaviour, doubts started to emerge over the Sun’s key allegation that he bought pictures from a 17-year-old. The young person in question, now an adult aged 20, issued a statement on Monday their lawyer saying the allegations were “rubbish”.

They also insisted they had told the Sun prior to publication that the story was wrong and no illegal behaviour took place, yet the newspaper had failed to flag this denial in any of its reporting.

The Sun, which normally defends its stories to the hilt, soon began to backtrack. One source at the Sun said on Tuesday they had been “very careful” to not suggest images had been exchanged at that age.

The Sun sources instead tried to shift the blame other outlets – notably the Sunday Times, a fellow Rupert Murdoch newspaper – for suggesting there could be a criminal inquiry. They said readers should have interpreted the story as a piece about concerned parents trying to stop payments to a vulnerable person with a drug habit.

The same people even suggested that it was not the Sun’s inquiries into Edwards that prompted the BBC investigation – and that the newspaper had merely helped the parents with an existing stalled investigation.

It is also unclear whether the Sun has seen much of the underlying evidence for its allegations in terms of bank statements or other hard evidence. The newspaper’s reporting has instead been based on anonymous interviews with the mother and stepfather of the 20-year-old at the heart at the story, interviews it says have been backed up by signed legal affidavits.

On Wednesday night the Sun said they have no plans to publish further allegations but would provide the BBC corporate investigations team “with a confidential and redacted dossier containing serious and wide-ranging allegations which we have received, including some from BBC personnel”.

They insisted they had simply been reporting the concerns of a mother and a stepfather: “From the outset, we have reported a story about two very concerned and frustrated parents who made a complaint to the BBC about the behaviour of a presenter and payments from him that fuelled the drug habit of a young person. We reported that the parents had already been to the police who said that they couldn’t help. The parents then made a complaint to the BBC which was not acted upon. It is now for the BBC to properly investigate.”

In a sign of its growing defensiveness and nervousness, on Tuesday the Sun published a lengthy editorial stating the story was “squarely in the public interest” and insisted its reporting was always about “alleged abuse of power”.

One issue throughout the past five days is that the rest of the media were unable to independently verify most of the allegations and had to rely on the Sun’s reporting. The BBC also dedicated enormous resources to chasing the story, covering it across many of its bulletins.

Since the Sun’s original story, other allegations have been made against Edwards, albeit anonymously. The Sun claimed he travelled across London during lockdown restrictions to meet a person he met on a dating app, while another individual said they exchanged messages with Edwards on Instagram while a child.

BBC News also deployed its investigations team to work on stories about Edwards, publishing a story about the presenter talking to a person in their early 20s on a dating site. When the person publicly talked about naming Edwards online, they allegedly received abusive messages from the presenter.

Shortly before Edwards was named, one BBC journalist questioned whether a flawed story had been used as a battering ram for other pieces. They said: “We could get into a situation where there is a story in the Sun about a BBC presenter that is not what it was billed as at the beginning – and turns out to be not criminal. But it has set the hare racing to see what other people can find out about the presenter.”

There may still be more to learn about the case, with other journalists still working on investigations into Edwards.

But it is the Sun which is now facing serious questions – and a potential legal risk: Edwards has used his Twitter account to like a tweet suggesting the Sun could now “face the mother of all libel actions”.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/ ... uw-edwards

[barkingmad]

It’s all due to Brexit-voting “Climate Emegency” sceptical GBNews viewers who refuse to watch MSM, simples! !

https://dailysceptic.org/2023/07/13/ima ... presenter/

But it will provide more encouragement to our elected representatives in their indecent haste to emulate the freedom of expression and publication as practised in the old Soviet Union and the wonerful Socialist heaven which was East Germany…

[Woody]

No doubt GB News will be offering unwavering support to one of its team members that has apparently been less than whiter than white in their own personal life.

[4mastacker]

T15, quite. I do wonder about Vine. Whilst purporting to be a friend he demonstrated complete failure of empathy. Jon Sopel otoh was far more understanding.

I watched that Victoria Derbyshire on Wednesday's 'Newsnight' and it was very obvious there was no love lost between her and Edwards.

Apparently, the newspaper that should not be mentioned in polite society claims that she was already planning an exposé on Edward's alleged behaviour.

Makes you wonder if (a) someone at the BBC had tipped off the Sun and (b) Derbyshire is scheming to take the main presenter's slot now that Edwards is out of the way.

The BBC News department is very much a nest of vipers.

[tango15]

T15, quite. I do wonder about Vine. Whilst purporting to be a friend he demonstrated complete failure of empathy. Jon Sopel otoh was far more understanding.

I watched that Victoria Derbyshire on Wednesday's 'Newsnight' and it was very obvious there was no love lost between her and Edwards.

Apparently, the newspaper that should not be mentioned in polite society claims that she was already planning an exposé on Edward's alleged behaviour.

Makes you wonder if (a) someone at the BBC had tipped off the Sun and (b) Derbyshire is scheming to take the main presenter's slot now that Edwards is out of the way.

The BBC News department is very much a nest of vipers.

Yes, I would agree. I have only ever dealt with the BBC at arm's length - Farnborough, (sadly post the Raymond Baxter days), and once when the North-West division discovered that we were building flying machines in the suburbs of Manchester. Seldom have I come across a stranger bunch of individuals. I've dealt with TV people in other countries too - even Russia - but they seemed far more normal. Current events notwithstanding, I have long believed that it takes a certain kind of individual to inhabit that organisation.

[4mastacker]

Never mind the doctors strike, NHS services under extreme pressure, the cost of living crisis, the war in Ukraine, heat-waves across the world( except in this country where it's currently blowing a hooley and pissing it down), what's the main item on the BBC 6 o'clock news?? A strike by a bunch of luvvies in Hollywood! Got to get it's priorities right.

[tango15]

Never mind the doctors strike, NHS services under extreme pressure, the cost of living crisis, the war in Ukraine, heat-waves across the world( except in this country where it's currently blowing a hooley and pissing it down), what's the main item on the BBC 6 o'clock news?? A strike by a bunch of luvvies in Hollywood! Got to get it's priorities right.

tsk tsk, 4ma! Ist thou not aware that ye Bent Boys Club is fascinated, nay overwhelmed, by anything remotely related to celebrity and the land that George III gave away? Thou shalt be sentenced to watching ye boxe set of Strictly Come Baking on Ice, whilst tied to a medieval throne. Verily, the BBC doth remind me of one of my own plays, 'Much Ad About Nothing', since it involveth infidelity, deception, masks and hidden identity.

[4mastacker]

Nay, nay, nay Sir, I beg of thee. Anything but Strictly etc. It is not a thing any decent human being would inflict on a fellow human (even us Geordies). I shall repent my sins and do the washing up as penance.

[tango15]

Nay, nay, nay Sir, I beg of thee. Anything but Strictly etc. It is not a thing any decent human being would inflict on a fellow human (even us Geordies). I shall repent my sins and do the washing up as penance.

A Geordie thou sayest? Forsooth! In this case, thy sentence will be commuted. Thou art sentenced to watching one edition of 'Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads'. But first, thou must repeat after me: 'I will not watch BBC News.'

[Pinky the pilot]

Reading all the above tends to make me think that the only good thing that ever came out of the BBC was `The Goon Show.`

`This is the BBC.` sfx: Cue sounds of weeping, wailing Women

[G-CPTN]

I blame the Goon Show for my 'sense of humour'.

[4mastacker]

A Geordie thou sayest? Forsooth! In this case, thy sentence will be commuted. Thou art sentenced to watching one edition of 'Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads'. But first, thou must repeat after me: 'I will not watch BBC News.'

Can you make that 'Auf Wiedersein, Pet"? Serves two purposes - one's me penance and the other helps Mrs 4ma to learn Geordie - being a Surrey girl she has some....ahem...difficulty.... with the translation. Jimmy Nail was a near neighbour when we lived in Benton. As me mam would say " He's a bad'un that Jimmy Bradford. Nowt good will come of him".