Watching Huw Edwards take his place in the dock at Westminster Magistrates Court on Wednesday morning was a surreal experience.

The man who was once the BBC’s highest paid news anchor, earning a salary almost on par with the corporation’s director general Tim Davie, cut a pathetic, solitary figure behind the glass panels of the dock. His voice was impassive as he stated his name, age and partial address.

It was equally impassive when, to everyone’s surprise, Edwards pled guilty to all three counts of “making indecent images of children.” So shocked was I to hear his first guilty plea that my hands froze over my keyboard as I was furiously making notes of the proceedings, my ears straining to ensure I’d heard correctly as he again pleaded guilty to the second charge and finally to the third.

In the U.K., the offense of “making...