Disgraced ex-BBC News presenter Huw Edwards has lost a privacy and accuracy complaint against the Daily Mail.

Edwards, who admitted having indecent images of children in 2024 and served a six-month suspended sentence, called UK press regulation a “travesty” in his response on Substack.

Edwards complained about an article headlined “Retired teacher giving Huw ’emotional support’” published in December 2025.

The article reported on claims from sources in his local area that he had “formed a close bond with” a woman who he had been “leaning on for ’emotional support’” and been seen with publicly. It reported: “She is said to have been counselling Edwards.”

The article also included details of the village where Edwards lived and who he lived with.

Edwards accused the Daily Mail of breaching his privacy in publishing information about his friendship and his living arrangements without it being in the public interest.

The Daily Mail offered to remove the online version of the article, request its delisting from search engines and to make staff aware Edwards considered his friendship and living arrangements to be private. The article remains unavailable online, including on newspaper digital edition archive Pressreader.

The Daily Mail published an apology in April after it was contacted by the retired teacher in question, who said the claims were untrue and that she considered the article to have breached her privacy. “We apologise for any intrusion or distress caused,” it said.

Edwards wanted a separate correction to be published in response to his complaint, with similar wording, but the Daily Mail refused as it felt the previous apology was sufficient, as well as the fact it had removed the article.

In its response to press regulator IPSO, the Daily Mail noted that information about Edwards’ living arrangements had already been reported publicly without complaint for the previous two years.

It also told IPSO “a friendship – particularly one which had been conducted in a public space and had caused speculation in the local community – was not private” and that it was careful to show the claims were attributed to neighbours.

In finding there had been no breach of privacy, IPSO noted “the friendship had clearly been observed in public, given the quotes from the neighbours and other sources” and that Edwards “had been open about his struggles with his mental health, and that the reference to counselling and spiritual guidance was brief and non-specific”.

IPSO also said hundreds or thousands of people live in a village, lessening “any potential security risk”, and that the local community already knew he lived there and saw him around.

In terms of accuracy, IPSO said the term “counselling” can have various interpretations “from friends offering advice to one another, to a more formal professional arrangement” but added that this was a clearly a description by the Daily Mail rather than a choice of words by Edwards or the woman.

“This served to qualify the reference to counselling by making clear it was ‘believed’ and was ‘said’ Therefore, this was distinguished as an outsider’s perspective of the relationship.

“Given this, and where it was not in dispute that the pair had some form of friendship, the committee did not consider the reference to ‘counselling’ to be significantly inaccurate.”

Writing on Substack after the IPSO ruling against him was published, Edwards said the claims in the article were “untrue – all of it”.

Edwards wrote: “There was never any ‘counselling’, ‘pastoral care’, or ‘spiritual guidance’. These were all fabricated claims.

“Deploying the ‘outsider’s perspective’ dodge will not fool anyone.”

Edwards added that the press has “Immense power. No accountability,” criticising the way IPSO is run without recognition by the Press Recognition Panel.

The PRP is the regulators’ regulator set up by the Government to verify that a press oversight body is compliant with the recommendations of the Leveson inquiry. Critics say this amounts to state regulation.

Read the full IPSO ruling here.

Email [email protected] to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our “Letters Page” blog