Perhaps the trouble with television newsreaders began almost 50 years ago, when a familiar face made a guest appearance on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special. Britons over the age of 60 will remember Angela Rippon high-kicking her way across the stage. For readers born more recently, Ms Rippon – yes, the same trouper still cutting it on Strictly last year – had previously achieved celebrity behind a news desk (and Morecambe and Wise were a comedy double act that headed the BBC’s most successful Christmas show).

We should not have gasped at her long legs and dancing prowess, for BBC newsreaders in those innocent days were typically drawn not from journalism but from showbusiness. Most were there simply to read the news, without any suggestion that they might once have done a piece to camera from the Falls Road in Belfast. We judged them on their ability to generate gravitas and radiate trust, and possibly on their sex appeal.

In emancipating Ms Rippon that Christmas in 1976, the BBC briefly removed the straitjacket of news, letting her run wild in the world of entertainment. These days, it seems not to understand the difference. It sensibly now draws newsreaders from the ranks of reporters, but treats them as “talent”, giving them licence to behave like entertainers.

This creates three problems: control, reward and credibility, all of which emerged in the case of Huw Edwards, until recently the BBC’s leading purveyor of trust. Those of us who worked in print always worried that broadcasters couldn’t help allowing the attention to go to their heads. They humble-brag, proclaim the importance of their teams, protest that it is no grown-up job to be paid “to read aloud”. “We’re just gobs on a stick,” they say. And little by little, they respond as turning sunflowers to the attention of the runners, the make-up artists, the producers who prepare them for the mic. The response from management should be to tighten the rein. Too often, it gives talent its way.

As for reward, our news presenters are paid salaries their workmates – all those reporters and producers and researchers they hail as the unsung heroes – can only envy. But news is going broke. Is there an external market? Could they find elsewhere the viewers and celebrity offered to them by the BBC? Does a fragmented audience, in these days of multiple channels, online coverage and round-the-clock availability, even demand a constant face?

And, lastly, credibility. Should those men and women who read the news with such serious purpose pop up on entertainments such as Have I Got News For You, to read purportedly comic lines written for them about figures who could be on the news next day? While Mr Edwards was innocent of this last charge – we recall him moonlighting only on Songs of Praise – his Instagram feed provoked much ironic comment among colleagues at the BBC and might certainly be seen to have detracted from his role as a serious news presenter.

As The Times columnist Janice Turner noted fully five years ago: “He is rightly proud of being in fantastic shape for 57. There are many shots of him training with Clinton McKenzie, a former pro boxer, or flexing his biceps in Dulwich Park. But he’s also a man of intellectual depth, so we see Huw brooding into middle distance…” Amid the sniggering behind his back, why did no one take him to one side to warn him he was damaging his credibility?

We must say that no greater degree of control would necessarily have prevented Mr Edwards’s path to Westminster magistrates and a conviction for possessing pornographic pictures of children. But a willingness to address bad behaviour might have made BBC executives respond to rumours that he propositioned young men with whom he worked. Certainly, a more far-sighted view on reward in news and current affairs would have prevented the BBC not only paying him so much during the months that he was off air, but also awarding him a pay rise.

There’s a simple solution for the BBC. Admit that the “voice of the nation” is a voice of the past and that the real value of television news lies in research, reporting and pictures, rather than the reading. Heavens, we’d be perfectly happy to see more of those who present in relative anonymity on the 24 hours news channel. You won’t get your critics off your back. But you will give them much less to aim at.

KF