I hesitated about writing this column because, as a Brit in America, I don’t like it when my mother country looks ridiculous. (Yeah, I know, the last decade has been rough.) And there is simply no way to write this without making the UK, and more specifically, its media ecosystem, look ridiculous. Sorry King Charles, I tried my best.
So what’s going on? Good question: nobody really knows. But it all started last Saturday when the Sun put out an explosive front-page story claiming that an unnamed but well-known male BBC presenter had been paying a now 20-year-old “more than £35,000 since they were 17 in return for sordid images”. The British tabloid, which built its brand by featuring topless women on its page 3 for almost 50 years, is not known for being nuanced and restrained. Still, even by the paper’s own questionable standards, the reporting on this was shocking. The Sun rushed out a story suggesting a serious criminal offence, without seeming to possess much of the underlying evidence to support the allegation.
