The Sun’s Victoria Newton has revealed she felt “quite lonely” at times in her capacity as editor in the wake of the paper’s revelation that a BBC star had been taken off air after “paying a teenager for sexual pictures”.
While The Sun chose not to name the star at the centre of the scandal, journalist Vicky Flind later revealed it was her husband Huw Edwards.
The Metropolitan Police investigated the claims but concluded there was “no information to indicate that a criminal offence has been committed”.
The Sun then became the subject of criticism for reporting the claims, intensified by the news that Edwards had been hospitalised for a serious mental health episode.
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But with Edwards now having pleaded guilty to three counts of having indecent images of children, Sun editor Victoria Newton has defended her paper’s original coverage of Edwards on BBC Radio 4’s The Media Show.
‘Everyone was saying we had made this story up’
Newton noted that The Sun “never said it was a criminal offence” in its reporting last year, adding that “it’s a very grey area, it’s a very complicated bit of law.
“We made a strong decision at the time that we weren’t going to publish any of the evidence, or any more background, so he could recover. The problem for us was a big one, because everyone was saying we must have made this story up.”
However The Sun had plenty of evidence to substantiate its reporting, including texts, Whatsapp messages, social media messages, and bank statements, Newton said.
She said the paper had been “getting information on Edwards’ behaviour going back to 2018… There was a pattern of behaviour; it was always the same modus operandi… so we knew that before this family came to us.”
But when the parents of the young man involved contacted The Sun with their concerns, Newton decided it was right to publish the allegations. She said: “With other stories, we’d always looked at them individually and gone ‘is there public interest in that? No there isn’t. Not interested’.
“But this particular story stood out because there was a young person at the heart of this who was in a desperate situation, highly vulnerable, and the parents felt they had nowhere else to go. They’d gone to the BBC, they talked to the police, and they got nowhere, and they just wanted the payments to stop. So that’s why they came to us in desperation.”
Newton continued: “At one stage, we maybe had 20 lawyers in the room, it felt like that anyway. But ultimately the loneliness of being an editor often is when you’ve had all the legal advice you can, and the advice around IPSO which is our self-regulatory body… ultimately you have to make that decision.
“So when you get attacked for that, that can also feel quite lonely. But we have an army of good people who help us hopefully make the right decisions.”
Sun editor says Huw Edwards arrest ‘should have been revealed at the time’
Newton claimed that numerous newspapers had heard rumours that Edwards had been arrested in November last year but were never given confirmation by police so were unable to report it.
Ultimately the Met did not tell journalists Edwards had been charged in June until Monday 29 July, two days before he was due in court.
“We all tried,” Newton said. “We went to the Met, and with various other newspapers the rumours went round, and I was certain that it was true. But until you have the Met confirm it, you can’t go with it. And I know that lots of other reporters tried it and they were met with the rule of silence.”
Newton expressed her frustration with the opacity that now surrounds celebrity arrests and charges, blaming rulings that have “set the tone for what people can and can’t publish”.
A Supreme Court ruling in 2022, Bloomberg LP vs ZXC, has had a significant impact on the ability to report on early criminal proceedings as it determined that a person under investigation cannot be named by the media until they are charged.
Newton added that “you take a huge risk as a publisher if you decide to say ‘okay, I’m going to name that person who’s been arrested because it’s in the public interest’.
“You’re potentially liable to be sued for millions of pounds. So you can imagine being a small publisher or local newspaper, and you’re never going to take that risk.”
She added: “The public should have a right to know, certainly when someone’s been charged with such a serious offence. Often you find with cases of sexual abuse, the only way you can find people guilty in court is more victims coming forward. So I’m a firm believer that the arrest should have been revealed at the time.”
Sun editor: BBC News coverage made us ‘vilified’
Newton primarily blamed the BBC for turning the narrative of the scandal onto The Sun when the Metropolitan Police found no evidence of criminality and Edwards was being treated in hospital.
The BBC was originally criticised for focusing on the scandal too much, though it claimed its coverage was proportionate.
Newton said: “I did feel, and I have to say it was BBC News that did this, the point that changed the story in terms of us being vilified by the friends of Mr Edwards, and by various people who worked at the BBC, was when the BBC News at Six ran a letter from the young man saying that the story was total rubbish. And they gave us an hour’s notice on that.
“I had already been in discussions with BBC News saying ‘do you understand he’s highly vulnerable?’ He’d had Huw Edwards on the phone threatening him that he was going to destroy his family if he went ahead with the story, and that he had to make it stop.
“That person was under so much pressure, and I did warn BBC News, but they ran that anyway, and that was the thing that changed the narrative.”
Since Edwards pleaded guilty to separate offences, the young person has come forward to tell the Daily Mirror he now feels like he was “taken pure advantage of” by the broadcaster but that he “felt obliged to protect him” after he was named last year.
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