For most of
the past week our media, both print and broadcast, our politicians, and, I suspect,
most of the public have obsessed (there’s no other word) over the case of the “as
yet unidentified” BBC presenter and the alleged £35 000 he paid a young man for
“explicit” pictures of himself. None of those
involved have come out with reputations unblemished.
The allegations,
carefully crafted to suggest something illegal as well as immoral and
inappropriate, first appeared in the “Sun” newspaper, which for years boosted
its circulation by exhibiting (fairly) explicit pictures (upper, not lower) of
teenage girls which made its “Page 3” famous.
The ”Sun”
is, of course, owned by the Rupert Murdoch News Corp empire, which also owns,
among many other media outlets, commercial television stations such as Sky New and Fox News. It is well known that News Corp would like to get their hands on hands on the large slice of the British and
international airwaves occupied by the publicly-owned BBC. So any damage to its
reputation is to their advantage, and will encourage their friends in the Tory
party to help then gain a chunk of the BBC’s share of the market. (Market being, perhaps, a key word in their lexicon).
For months Tory
party spokespersons have been jumping into the media to assure us that, in a
world endangered by climate change, inflation, a land war in Europe, a migrant
crisis and Lord only knows what else,ex-Prime Minister Johnson’s activities around
”Partygate” are really quite a trivial matter. We should forget about them, move on and
let the government get on with its real job of tacking these oh-so serous threats.
Suddenly this urge for a sense of proportion
has been thrown out of the window and senior government spokespersons have crowded
the news outlets with indignant protestations that the BBC has “serious
questions to answer” and its governance, performance and funding are in need of
an overhaul. The “British People,” and
not least “the Licence Payer” deserve better.
Astonishingly,
senior Labour spokespersons have joined in on the similar lines. Have they not the sense to realise that,
apart from a minority of the print press, the BBC is the best media friend they have,
despite its overcompensation in favour of climate deniers, hide-bound free-marketeers and
other extremists in a search for “balance”?
I suspect it
is in order to avoid accusations of partiality that the BBC has overcompensated
by giving disproportionate airtime to
this issue, for fear of accusations of playing it down.
As the week
progressed questions began to be raised as to what exactly was the great wrong
that the still unidentified presenter had perpetrated. A curious anomaly in British law
emerged. Whilst it is perfectly
legal to have actual sex with a “child”
over the age of 16, the “age of consent,” it is not legal to have “explicit pictures”
of him or her until he or she is 18, the
age of adulthood. The “child” in the
case is now 20, so at what age were the
pictures taken? The “Sun” quickly
backtracked on its insinuation that a “serious criminal act” had taken
place. The police now say that “nothing
criminal” had happened.
I have no evidence
for this (I’ve been retired from teaching and daily contact with adolescents
for 20 years) but from what I read in the papers I gather that young people routinely
exchange “explicit pictures” of each-other as part of the development of “relationships”,
as indeed do adults, and the results of their artistry often turn up in the
courts as “revenge porn.” Perhaps the
law needs revising.
Now Huw Edwards
has been revealed as the “prominent BBC presenter” (I am amazed: I had assumed
it would be someone from Radio 1 or Radio 5 live) a whole lot of moral and ethical questions arise: the exploitation
of a “vulnerable” young person by an older and powerful person; (would it have
been as “voyeuristic” had the young person been a girl?); were slightly older men starting their
careers in the BBC and hoping for advancement, also approached; to what extent is anybody‘s legal activity outside their employment
a matter for their employer; (It is in
living memory that a teacher in Batley was reprimanded by a school’s governors for eating an ice-cream publicly whilst walking
along Commercial Street); the invasion of
privacy, both of Edwards himself, who is known to have mental health problems,
his family, and the young man, who is now apparently a drug addict.
The one somewhat
happier turn of events is that the “serious questions to answer” are now directed
at the “Sun,” rather than the BBC.
The final
puzzle to me is what on earth is it that tempts a mature and successful man, at
the top of his profession (heir to Richard and then David Dimbleby in interpreting
the British State at its seminal moments), apparently happily married
with five grown-up children, and whose salary nudges half a million pounds a
year, doing messing about on dating apps and other innovations better suited to
the young, in order to scratch, so it seems, some sexual itch. Clearly it seems, sex is a great leveller which
can tempt us all, from the over-adventurous teenager to the sagest of adults
(bishops, princes of the blood, business tycoons, stars of stage, screen and
radio) into behaviour which would have
been best avoided.
My final
comment concerns the language used to discuss the issue. Although the young
person at the centre of it is clearly male, and there’s just one of him (so far?), both the print and broadcast media refer to him with non-gender pronouns:
“their” and “them” rather than “his” and
“him.”. I admit that the “he/she” and “his/her”
construction which is necessary when the gender is in doubt is clumsy. . But why use it what the individual is clearly
a man or a woman?
I am sorry to see this catching on because it causes my
reading or listening to “stumble” - something which good prose should avoid. Would it not be better to “invent” some new pronoun?
The OUP
should run a competition. I suggest “shis” and “thir” for starters.
