The world's worst kept secret was revealed last night when Huw Edwards was named as the BBC presenter at the centre of the media storm. 
In an emotional statement, his wife revealed he was in hospital and in a bad way. The Sun decided not to print further allegations.  The BBC's own news teams went ahead with new breaking stories. 
Where do we draw the line between HR complaints and investigative reporting? 
Former editor of The Sun, David Yelland, is back with us - he asks if the BBC understand the asymmetric war being waged on it by News UK.  
And later - has Boris Johnson really forgotten the pin number of his mobile phone?

This is a Global Player original podcast.

Last night, just before 06:00, we heard from the wife of the presenter, Hugh Edwards.

Vicki Flynn came forward with a statement that, if you like, outed her husband as the man at the centre of the BBC presenter scandal.

Although many people in the country will already have known who it was, it kind of stopped the story in its tracks.

And Vicky also went on to say that Hugh, who had suffered from depression, had now been admitted to hospital with serious mental health issues and that it was a very difficult time for all concerned, that the previous 5 days had been horrible.

But on BBC News they carried on with the story and their own investigation into fresh allegations surrounding him, even though they had just read out on air that he was in hospital with mental health issues.

So we're finding our way in this episode, asking questions about where investigative journalism is about doing your job properly, where it becomes invasive to privacy and mental health, and what we have learnt, if anything, from the way this whole scandal has been covered.

And as we sit here, we are puzzling questions about the very nature of journalism, when it goes too far, and when it has to carry on doing its job in the face of a changing story.

And as John said, there were fresh allegations coming out about the text that Hugh Edwards was purportedly sending to younger colleagues at the BBC at the same time as the news organisation was telling us about his severe depression and the fact that he was currently in hospital.

And I think it raises really important questions about how the nature of journalism and the nature of privacy has to co-exist and whether we actually know where that balance is.

Because I would say that today, when the story broke really, there was an era of something must be done.

Everyone knew that something had changed, that this poor man was in hospital.

And yet, obviously, there will be journalists here saying, but that doesn't stop us doing our work.

Everyone is essentially entrenching their own positions.

The Sun is still saying they did nothing wrong.

The BBC is carrying on with its investigations.

The BBC management is talking about reopening its investigations into how the complaint was or wasn't followed up.

So what, if anything, has this week taught us?

Well, that people don't quite know where the line is between, and it's an age-old question, what is the public interested in and what is in the public interest?

Because Surely, if you're a public broadcaster, like the BBC is, there is accountability.

And things do have to meet a different threshold than if you're the Sun newspaper with much lighter regulation and freer to go your own way.

But interestingly, the Sun said, well, we're not going to publish any more allegations about Hugh Edwards in light of the fact that he's in hospital with mental health issues.

Now, senior managers in News, do they not have the duty of care and responsibility that Tim Davie, the Director General, was talking about, about this duty of care that we have?

So for the managers to say, well, no, no, we're just interested in the journalism.

We're not interested in the duty of care.

And I also think that The Sun has now rode back from this implication of criminality in their coverage.

They literally said on their newspaper that the top BBC star who paid child, child, for sex pictures could be charged by cops and face years in prison.

They said could be, they didn't say it would be.

I mean of course you're absolutely right.

That is exactly what they are pointing to.

And they had a denial from the young person, their so-called child, and they chose not to run the denial.

And to be fair there might be really good reasons for that but we haven't heard them.

We've obviously asked the Sun, we've obviously asked for people to explain to us what was behind their editorial judgments on this.

And that has allowed BBC journalism to take the story on with alacrity, almost gusto, almost glee.

We're part of the pack, we're hunting, we're doing our own investigation.

To try and bring down somebody who only a week ago, just a week ago, was presenting BBC News coverage

of the coronation of the King in Scotland.

I mean, you couldn't get much higher than that.

Yeah, and so there was just this weirdness and disjunction.

And I've got to say, I have been contacted by a surprisingly large number of BBC staff, some senior, very senior, some junior that would not be known, about how distraught they were at some of the BBC coverage and have tried to raise it with bosses, and their complaints have fallen on deaf ears.

And it's like, when you're in the middle of this, the BBC does not want to hear complaints about its own news service from its own journalists and I think there has been considerable disquiet over the way the coverage has unfolded on the BBC in the past 24, 48 hours.

I mean we've now had it firmed up that investigations at the BBC into Hugh Edwards sort of alleged behaviour on text were being investigated before the Sun ever broke their story.

And we kind of touched on this in the podcast yesterday, but whilst you never want journalists to stop doing their job, you are in a really weird place if the way that you raise a concern about a fellow presenter or colleague is not through an HR process, is not through a complaints process, but by breaking a story about them because they're famous.

And I think that's the thing you can't get away.

If it had been a manager, They would just have had to go to HR.

But because they can get traction on a famous person, and to be honest, we've all been at the centre of media storms and had your picture splashed across the paper.

And it's very easy for anyone to make anything into a story because you have a profile.

And I just wonder whether they would have actually broken that story if it hadn't been that The Sun set the template.

The situation that we're in with the confirmation that Victoria Derbyshire, the presenter of Newsnight, had been investigating Hugh Edwards.

I mean, so BBC News presenter investigates BBC News presenter.

I once was in the situation when I was...

But you wouldn't have said that about Savile, right?

So if you had been the person, and obviously I was at Newsnight and it was Liz and Myron, 2 of the greatest investigative journalists really that we've ever known, who did try and do that and they said, Jimmy Savile is the 1 you should be focusing on.

And of course, what we now know is that he was lauded and praised and all the rest of it.

I'm not in any way comparing this with the Savile episode, but I'm just saying that BBC journalists like to think that actually they should be able to break a story that's in their backyard because they didn't with Savile.

I was in a position when I was North America editor where the complaints unit rang up and said there is a complaint about you and your coverage of Donald Trump.

And I thought, well, fair enough, I'm expecting that.

And then I got another call saying the call has come from a reporter at BBC Radio Guernsey, I think.

So some journalist at Radio Guernsey who had used the external BBC complaints process to make a complaint about me and so I contacted the person directly and said if you had a problem with my coverage Drop me a line.

If you think that Hugh's overstepped the mark and he's sent inappropriate messages to younger members of staff, Victoria could just ring up Hugh and say, Hugh mate, sorry this is a bit out of order, why don't you rein it in a bit?

But to actually start launching a journalistic investigation, which at best seems to me it could be an HR issue and not much more.

I mean let's not minimize the allegations because it might very well be something that we don't know the full story about and it might go to HR, it might go further afield than we can tell at the moment.

I suppose the thing that makes me feel uncomfortable is the idea that you see everything as a chance to get something on air that could do someone else down.

When if you're working in a any kind of collegiate atmosphere, wouldn't it be more appropriate to say, look mate, this is out of order, you've got to rein it in, or look mate, this is out of order, I've got to tell HR because I'm so alarmed at what I've heard.

But the idea you're investigating it and putting it on air, the night that person has gone into hospital, wrong side of the line.

Well in a moment we'll be speaking to the former Sun editor David Yelland who was with us right at the beginning of the week helping us make sense of this story and is now back with us reflecting on just where we've ended up as the week draws to a close.

Well joining us now is David Yelland, former editor of The Sun and a man who I think really set the pace and set the tone this week by raising questions about the relationship between the Sun and the BBC at the very beginning in all this and David I wonder if you think after a full week of the story, a week of reflection, the Sun still doesn't actually think it's made a misstep on this?

Within all organisations there is a legend and a story which people tend to believe.

That's particularly true of tabloid newspapers.

So everyone within The Sun is not in a grumpy bad mood or feeling particularly negative at all today.

And we said earlier in the week that The Sun had the BBC exactly where they wanted the BBC in the sense that the majority of people in the country thought that we had another Jimmy Savile type situation developing.

And a lot of people in the country still think that.

That BBC has been damaged and therefore the Sun has succeeded in what it set out to do and I think they would say if you think if you look back and think well what actually happened here Go back and look at the first story.

It's a single column story, which means it's not a lot of words.

And what they effectively did, and they did it very well, was it's like an incendiary attack on the BBC.

If you think of it like, you know, firebombing the BBC, metaphorically, and then running away.

No interviews, we haven't seen a single sound person other than 1 columnist go on TV and defend, you know, and others have fanned the flames, including the BBC itself.

The crux of the matter feels to me that they had a denial from the young person in question that they did not run.

If this ends up, as it may do, as a libel case, because there's no doubt that Hughes' legal team will make that accusation when he's better.

I don't think there's any doubt about that the fact that the son Chose not to run and on the record denial by the person who was the subject of the story is not good for them Why didn't they run it?

I can imagine a scenario where you wouldn't run it if you were so convinced as an editor that the story was accurate and that this person was so damaged that they should be disregarded.

But I think that's a very big call to make.

to make a case for libel given that the Sun will say didn't name him?

It's very simple to libel somebody you don't need to name them you just need other people to say, I knew who it was.

And I think you could go into any pub in the country.

The definition of a libel is that you have damaged somebody's reputation or caused them financial loss.

Certainly Hugh Edwards lawyers would think there's a very, very, so you don't need to name someone to libel them.

Right, but there has to be some form of identification.

Doesn't the Sun have a defence saying, but look, it was subsequent, We didn't know that Jeremy Vine was going to come out and Nicky Campbell was going to come out and say it wasn't me and a whole pile of other people came out and said it wasn't me.

And therefore by a process of elimination, people are lighted on Hugh.

If Hugh's lawyers can prove to a judge or more likely this was settled before a judge but let's just go through the scenario

Just say that you think that the son will just be willing to pay?

Well what will be happening Now despite the fact that he was in hospital, his legal team will be looking to see if they have a case for defamation.

And at the Sun, the in-house legal team will probably already have taken external counsel, which means a casey view.

And if Hugh Edwards sues the Sun for libel, then the decision-making goes above the editor's head.

So what actually happens is the 2 legal teams are interacting behind the scenes and if the external counsel that the Sun would have advises you're going to lose this they'll settle.

Okay I go back to the word that you used earlier in answer to Emily that it's been a success.

If the Sun has to settle a huge libel bill yeah it's still a success?

As we sit here now, what I'm saying is, my own personal view is that this is a disgrace.

If you walked in this room I would give him a hug, that's the first thing I would do.

And by the way, the young person affected, who I'm very concerned about, but we can go on to that in a minute.

But you asked me what's the atmosphere at the Sun at the moment and the fact is that they have succeeded in what they tried to do which is to damage the BBC and to raise this issue.

There are clearly texts and so on which will be the subject of an inquiry, an HR inquiry at the BBC.

So it's not as if there wasn't something there that merited running a news story but it's the way in which it was run which is the problem and the accusation, the implication that he had broken the law with, quote unquote, a child, which is a word that was used repeatedly through the story.

And in terms of libel, I would say to the people listening, did you or does anybody you know think that this person had engaged in illegal activity with a child?

And if the answer to that is yes, then the case for libel exists.

Because they basically called him a paedophile and they've got absolutely nothing to substantiate that.

Lots of people in the country, including Lee Anderson and Priti Patel, assisted The Sun in making that very clear, yeah absolutely.

Now, funnily enough, this is not the BBC so I can use the word shit fight, there is a real shit fight going on at News UK between The Sun and The Sunday Times because at The Sun some people there think The Sunday Times took this story on on the Sunday and implied things that they didn't.

And indeed the Mail on Sunday also on Sunday their front page because it was very aggressive, more aggressive actually than The Sun.

And that's what I mean by you know the editor of The Sun threw an incendiary device into new broadcasting house because what you do is you throw this in and then everyone else piles in, including the BBC's own journalists for laudable reasons, although we can discuss that later, maybe there are other issues around that as well.

That has resulted in Hugh being in hospital and the police making it quite clear that the law wasn't broken.

So what was this all about in the first place?

To push back a bit, David there are still investigations going on not of a criminal nature No, but we know of a let's call an inappropriate texting nature, right?

is the BBC right to proceed with those investigations by its own news teams at this moment?

1 is like an HR issue which is is the BBC right to investigate complaints made by its own people about late-night texts and so on.

I don't think there's any doubt about that.

And those things happen all the time in all organizations increasingly.

In terms of the journalism, I think overall the BBC has got to grow up and everyone within it has got to grow up and understand that there is an existential threat to the BBC from these people, from the commercial newspapers in this country and their owners.

The Andersons quote said, I mean, I haven't for perverts, you know, haven't for perverts, and we should get rid of the license fee.

Any politician on the right knows that if they say that they will carry favour with not just the Sun but with other newspapers as well.

There's no doubt that Tim Davy and his predecessors do understand that.

But within the organisation they're manipulated too easy.

So if I watch Laura Koonsberg on Sunday, which you know we all do, the first thing they do is there's the front pages.

Well the front pages then set the weather for the day.

So the BBC journalists would argue that their response to an existential threat is doing their own investigative job more robustly.

I think the news division has performed brilliantly this week.

I thought Newsnight last night, certain question mark, you know, let's see, you know, but what I'm saying is going back to my sort of metaphor of the sun throwing an incendiary device into the BBC, they would have known that this is what would happen.

They would know that the BBC would assist them in damaging the BBC once that initial...

Just say that again, you think the BBC has helped the Sun in damaging itself?

It's an asymmetrical war this because on the 1 side you've got the BBC Which is totally accountable, you know, Tim Davie is director general totally accountable totally trying to tell the truth Leaning over backwards both its journalists and its executives and then you've got the Sun on the other side which runs a story without mentioning the fact that the...

Yeah and then doesn't I haven't seen any Sun journalist, the editor or anybody else.

Rod Liddle was on Newsnight apparently last night, he's a sort of columnist, but he's not really a sandstaffer, defending themselves.

Well, you know, the BBC, I think Tim Davies has handled this as best as possibly could.

There is the issue of the original complaint and why it wasn't investigated.

But we still don't know what the family said, what the accusation was, we don't know anything about what actually happened a couple of months ago yet.

But I mean 1 of the things that I found extraordinary, disturbing, I think even depressing, last night,

was you know, Someone texted me and said there's a statement from Hugh's wife Vicky, saw it, listened to the Radio 4 Bulletin.

It goes into this whole thing about how Vicky has issued this statement that Hugh has been hospitalised, comes to the end of the report and

the news reader picks up and says, meanwhile we've got fresh allegations that the BBC has uncovered of a member of staff having been made to feel uncomfortable about 1 of his texts and you thought what we still the guys in hospital yeah you're still going on with this and it's about someone being made to feel slightly uncomfortable.

Do you think that is legitimate journalism?

Some of these things are just beyond anybody's control.

Because they would have prepared that story before they knew that Hugh's wife was going

But- They carried on with the report at 10 o'clock

Yeah, they couldn't pull it because if they pulled it, it would have leaked out, it would look like they were covering up and all these sorts of things.

I think this asymmetry which exists between The Sun, and newspapers actually, and the BBC is something that's not talked about enough and not understood enough within the BBC itself.

The word lies, you know, for the BBC to run a story saying the Sun lied, even though there may be a case for it, they couldn't do that because of all kinds of checks and balances within the organisation.

But the Sun ran a front page that said the BBC lied, which is based on the stepfather saying that he'd made the full complaint and the BBC said that the actual reality is that the BBC...

But you can count on the BBC and all the former BBC director generals and ex-heads of Radio 5 Live and so on usually to pile in, right, at criticizing the BBC.

You can't know when it agrees with anything in the BBC.

Whereas the Sun is a pyramid structure, right?

I know having edited it whatever I said Even if I was wrong and I was wrong quite a lot Went it's like a military organization and that's a strength and its weakness

And it's also the ungovernability of the BBC.

I know that the DG Tim Davie feels that the word he has used is surreal.

This kind of separation between the corporation and the news division, that Tim Davie could shout until he was blue in the face about what he wanted to happen.

And the news division would essentially say, very interesting, Tim.

We're going to do our own journalism here, which is a strength, and it's an absolute weakness.

1 of the great things about this country is the BBC and if we're not careful we're going to lose it.

But if you take the Gilligan case, which we know in great detail.

Sorry, just to give you a bit of context, this is 20 years ago we're going back to the Iraq war, the dodgy dossier and what he thought he knew then from David Kelly who was

I mean the fact is that Alistair Campbell was right and what Gilligan said on the Today programme was wrong.

That is, he was investigated and that is a fact.

But I happened to be in the BBC building so I was doing an interview when Greg Dyke left.

I remember, I practically, I think he was shoulder high.

And The wonderful profession of journalism is good at lots of things, but it's not very good at looking at itself, and particularly in the newspaper world.

I still speak to, you know, obviously, my friends who I grew up with, and sometimes it amuses me that they simply don't understand That the rest of the world has a very different view

That within the BBC that if you play nicely You will get the Daily Mail or the Sun or the Telegraph on board and that, you know, we've got to make moves towards them and they, it's never going to work.

They've got a vested interest in the BBC failing.

A literally, a commercial vested interest in not wanting the BBC to succeed.

I think that's from my own personal experience.

When I took over the Sun I wrote a leader in the first few weeks that basically said why the BBC should be closed down and I did that because I've been in New York for 10 years working for Murdoch over there but I why did I do it?

I did it because I wanted to curry favour with Rupert, is why I did it, if I'm not really honest.

The way to curry favour with the boss, not just at the Sun, but the mail, is to do that.

You were writing opinion leaders that you didn't believe?

But what happened with me was that every BBC person I met when I was editing, whether they were a journalist or the director general or whoever, I really liked.

And I thought, oh, you know, because I had no direct experience of the BBC before.

So is that the motivation of Victoria Newton at the editor of the Sun that Murdoch may have been on the shop floor she needs to impress right we'll do a big 1 up against the BBC?

I think Victoria has a very good track record actually on issues of child abuse, which this isn't, so that would have affected her view as well.

I think when you're in those, my experience of being editor of the Sun is that I lost the ability to know what I actually thought myself.

When I left the job it took me a few years to realize what my own politics were because you do align your politics and views with the boss.

And 1 other thing that you said to us at the beginning of the week which I thought was so fascinating was you said it was once upon a time the people who went in and gave their 20 bits over to buy the Sun that was the power.

Will they be thinking the Sun has had a success?

Or will they be thinking, oh crikey we're gonna lose people over this?

It's too early to tell but it will be of a concern at News UK, there's no doubt about that, because we've seen what's happened in GB News and the advertisers have a huge amount of power.

I haven't seen any evidence of it yet, but it is possible, yeah.

I mean, if there was a libel action and the son lost it that would be quite a moment as well.

Well I mean what kind of sum are you talking about?

I don't know but it's very possible that we wake up 1 day...

You see he has a year to make the case that's the law for libel then could take maybe a year or so.

But I think it's quite possible that nothing happens legally or that we wake up in a couple of years' time and the news tells us that an amount of money is being paid or that's often the way.

I'm not saying the sun has necessarily liable to you because that would be a foolish thing to say but I'm saying I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of settlement.

I know when I was editing, we settled a number of times when actually we probably had a case but the legal team take the view is it likely the judge or the jury will find in our favor.

See all The News Agents transcripts on Applepodcasts

Could Huw Edwards have a case for libel?