Huw Edwards story proves one thing: we need a better media

One gets the feeling that if he was drafted in to do 500 words on water polo ahead of next year’s Paris Olympics, he’d already have 450 in his head.

The second is that although I know what he knows, I do not know what he thinks. When he writes ahead of an Old Firm derby, I do not know who he wants to win, and when he writes about Rory McIlroy’s fragility at golf’s major championships, as he did on Wednesday night, I don’t know if he wants Mr McIlroy to win any more than he does Shane Lowry or Tommy Fleetwood or Matt Fitzpatrick.

READ MORE: Read more by Andy Maciver: There is a way to save our crumbling health service. Here it is

Mr English is far from the only sports reporter who does himself such justice. Across the UK, we have some outstanding sports desks - including The Herald's - which deal with meaningful content, who inform and who challenge, but who relatively rarely cross the line.

And Mr English’s polite and decent and squarely impartial probing is why that five or ten minutes was so merciful. Because it came in the middle of an hour of reading about the Huw Edwards debacle, and it exposed the gulf between the way we report sport and the way we report news and politics.

I am so dog-tired of scandal. It’s boring, it’s corrosive and, perhaps most importantly, it’s unambitious. We, in this country, are very far from holding great expectations about those who hold high public office. Our expectations are low, and our politicians, celebrities and television personalities meet them. Every time.

I am utterly unmoved about what Mr Edwards does in his private life, and about how he spends his money, and I am certain I am far from alone in this. We may not know for some time what he did, and with whom he did it, and whether his behaviour was acceptable or otherwise. By the time we find out, I suspect fewer of us still will care.

The damage is done. Mr Edwards’ career is wounded, probably beyond repair. More importantly his mental health, already persistently fragile, has ostensibly and unsurprisingly dipped. And of course there may be others involved who will today find themselves similarly at-risk.

There is nothing edifying about the way this story came into the public eye, nor is there anything edifying about the response to it. The Sun’s reporters did what British tabloids do so very well. They found the vulnerability that the big name did not want them to find. The faux outrage from their peers is hard to swallow - tabloids right, left and centre are upset only because they missed it.

READ MORE: Read more by Andy Maciver: Labour can beat SNP – by offering a route to a referendum

The splicing of the BBC into the story - the commercial press versus the tax-funded broadcaster - adds a layer of intrigue, but it is this layer of intrigue that demands a calm, proportionate and strategic response.

“Don’t buy The Sun” is not it. “How do we make a better media?” is it.

This is not a utopian plea for everyone to be nicer. High profile figures doing unwise things, whether criminal or otherwise, will find themselves on the wrong end of a newspaper story; that’s a tale as old as time, and indeed investigative journalists have uncovered many scandals, criminal and non-criminal, which have clearly been in the public interest.

However, we can raise the general level so that the bulk of what we read in newspapers and online, listen to on radio and watch on television, vaults a higher hurdle in terms of quality.

This particular story has not involved a politician, however I am of the view that much of the current media malaise has its origin in the deteriorating relationship between the media and the elected. The problem, at its heart, is a vicious cycle of poor content and poor coverage.

Politicians, especially those still trying to climb the greasy pole, are dismally overtrained not to answer the questions the media put to them, and the media will attempt to trick and trip politicians during interviews in a way that they do not do with any other guests, because if they don’t the interview will inevitably be as dull as dishwater.

There are a great number of important topics worthy of front page news that politicians could discuss with a non-sensationalist media, and a great number of important stories that the media could cover in interviews with straight-talking politicians.

For instance, I suspect that if Sir Keir Starmer thought the politician/media relationship could produce calm and frank reporting about the economic benefits of nudging back towards the European Union, he’d probably rather like to engage in it.

And if Rishi Sunak thought the politician/media relationship could handle him taking more drastic action to stimulate the economy - probably including tax cuts - then I suspect that is what we would see.

But we are far from there. Issues of substance and matters of high policy are considered too explosive, and so the media needs to work with what’s left, and dig for the more interesting news to fill front pages.

There are other issues here, for sure. The cloud over the BBC’s lack of accountability as an organisation, and the role that the compulsory funding model plays in it, is dark indeed, and no amount of pointing fingers at The Sun will derail the inevitable journey towards a Corporation funded, at least in part, by voluntary subscription.

Nonetheless, aside from Auntie’s issues, we can do better. Politicians can give the media more to work with. The media can work better with what they have.

So let’s stop this wailing about one newspaper, as though if it closed down all our problems would be solved. That is, of course, nonsense. If The Sun rises tomorrow, it’s because people want it to.

• Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters and Zero Matters