The Huw Edwards scandal shows that the BBC never learns

Albert Einstein wasn’t thinking about the BBC when he defined insanity as ‘doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result’, but he could have been. The BBC’s latest scandal, involving its former star presenter Huw Edwards, has followed a remarkably similar trajectory to the last two marmalade droppers that embroiled the Corporation.

The way the BBC dealt with Huw Edwards – once the embodiment of BBC culture and values but now a disgraced sex offender who admitted making indecent images of children – has strong echoes of the Jimmy Savile and Martin Bashir scandals. In both those cases, like this one, instead of acting swiftly and decisively, the BBC chose to obstruct, delay and (ironically) try to protect the brand.   

The circumstances of those scandals are well known but worth repeating. Had BBC management heeded Newsnight producer Meirion Jones’s warning in 2011 that ‘substantial damage’ would be done to the BBC’s reputation if they shelved his report into Savile’s crimes, they could have avoided a world of pain.