Last night my friend and former mentor Victoria Newton, editor-in-chief at The Sun, gave the Hugh Cudlipp keynote speech about the state of journalism and defending the role of the tabloid press against those who would like to close it down. She also talked in length about the Huw Edwards story and the toll it took on her and her team as the establishment gathered around the now disgraced news presenter, attacking her instead. Very few have apologised. This is what she said: There are still powerful people who would like the press to be more tightly controlled. They usually say this is about standards or privacy or responsibility, and sometimes it is, but sometimes it is really about those who have lived by publicity decidingly don't like scrutiny when the story turns against them. Of course, there must be rules and standards, but the answer can never be a system where politicians, celebrities, or the state decide what counts as news. The Huw Edwards story showed that very clearly. Let me tell you what it felt like from the editor's chair. We've been receiving tip-offs about Hugh Edwards from 2017, they were mostly people telling us that he was gay and messaging young men on social media. We decided there was no public interest in that reporting on someone's private sexuality. Then, in 2023, two parents came to us with a different story, their extremely vulnerable young son was receiving 1000s of pounds from Edwards in exchange for sending intimate images, and then using that money to fuel the drug habit. The parents just wanted the payments to stop. They had gone to the BBC. They had spoken to the police, but nothing had happened. They felt they had nowhere else to go, so they came to us. We published. We had ample evidence: texts, WhatsApps, social media messages, bank statements-we treated the story with the utmost seriousness and care. I had KCs around the table and a cottage industry of media lawyers to go through it properly. We did not identify the young person's gender, so that we didn't reveal the subject's sexuality, we were mindful of privacy of the vulnerability of the young person, Edward’s family, and his mental health. We were also mindful of the public interest in how the face of the British national broadcaster, the man who presided over our state occasions was conducting himself. But once he was named by his wife the backlash came. It was a firestorm of abuse directed against The Sun and me by the great and the good of the British media establishment. Friends of Edwards rushed into outbursts of sympathy for him on X and did their best to trash the story. More than one media grandee called for my resignation. The BBC laid siege to us on the six and 10 o'clock news. They breathlessly ran a denial issued by the young person's lawyer, which turned out to be completely untrue, without doing basic journalistic checks on its provenance. We had evidence which backed up every word of our story, which we shared with the BBC investigation. But given Edwards's family had said he was being treated for his mental health, we decided not to publish it. That meant absorbing the criticism for over a year, while holding back material that would have vindicated our position. That is one of the hardest places to be as an editor, and it was the toughest time in my career, no question. When your dad rings you up to check you’re okay because he's seen you on the 10 o'clock news, you think things are serious. It requires resilience because, in the end, the decision is on you. But it also impacts your whole team, who, despite being hard-bitten journalists, are human beings too. This went on for months and months. We had full confidence in our story, but I wasn't sure we'd ever be vindicated. (Part 2 below)