'Lowest point' BBC morale dives owing to handling of latest scandal

For Huw Edwards, once the most trusted newsreader in the country, now a convicted user of images of the most serious child sexual abuse, the disgrace is total - and nowhere more so than in his home country of Wales.

- Esther Addley

Hours after he pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children as young as seven, a plaque on a building at Cardiff castle commemorating its unveiling by Edwards had already been wrenched off; his voice was also deleted from the castle's audio guide. He is likely to be stripped of honorary titles at Bangor and Cardiff universities. A mural of the newsreader's face in his home village of Llangennech, Carmarthenshire has already been painted over.

For the presenter's former colleagues at the BBC, however, the issues arising from Edwards's crimes will not be so easily whitewashed. Inside the broadcaster, sources this week expressed intense disillusionment at senior management and questioned its handling of yet another crisis that many see as partly of the BBC's own making.