last friday Donald Trump called by phone Nigel Farage –the leader of a right-wing populist party called Reform UK– to complain about the BBC. “Is this how you treat your best ally over there?” he snapped, alluding to the good relations that the British and Americans have had for more than a century.
In that call, Trump was echoing an internal report leaked a few days earlier that explained, among other things, how British public television had manipulated a speech given by Trump on January 6, 2021; the day of the famous assault on the Capitol. The edited speech later appeared in a documentary broadcast a week before the last presidential election on a program called Panorama.
In the edition published by the BBC, the American president appears telling his followers that he was going to walk with them to the Capitol to “fight tooth and nail.” In fact, what Trump said at the time was that he would walk with them to the building “to make their voices heard in a peaceful and patriotic way.” It is true that “fighting tooth and nail” was not something he invented. Panorama. Trump said it… but almost an hour later. In short: the final edit can be considered manipulation.
A few days after his conversation with Farage, the American president decided to formally demand from the BBC “an apology, a retraction and compensation.” If he did not do so, his lawyers added, a lawsuit demanding $1 billion would fall. After a week of internal commotion and two resignations, the British channel’s apology arrived this Friday. The money, however, does not appear to be on the way.
“We accept that our editing unintentionally created the idea that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than extracts from different points in it, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action,” the BBC said in the apology note. Immediately afterwards, however, the network added that despite “deeply regretting” what happened, “we strongly disagree that there is a basis for a defamation lawsuit.”
Regardless of how the dispute between the British public channel and the president of the United States evolves, the British right has decided to take advantage of the prevailing tension to go on the offensive.
In recent days Farage has accused the BBC of “being infected by leftist bias” and Kemi Badenochleader of Conservative Partyhas charged against the “institutional bias” that drags the public chain. A clear allusion to Keir Starmerthe British Prime Minister, who is from Labor Party.
“It is not just about manipulation in a documentary about Donald Trump but it is about the way in which the BBC has continually covered issues of sex and gender,” Badenoch explained to the press before adding that the channel “is an institution that we must value, but the only way to take care of it is for it to start having a little humility and recognize its own mistakes.”
Badenoch also wanted to remember that the BBC is publicly funded. Ergo if it is sued by Trump – or anyone else – the cost ultimately falls on British taxpayers.
“Trump’s legal threats alleging bad press have become a common phenomenon,” noted a few days ago a media industry analyst named Joel Simon. “But in this case it is being used as part of a concerted campaign by British Conservatives seeking to discredit the BBC and ultimately cut its funding.”
The internal report
Be that as it may, the latest controversy surrounding British public television has led to one of the most serious reputational crises in recent times and, consequently, has already cost the general director his job, Tim Daviealready the head of news: Deborah Turness.
It all started when at the beginning of last week the Daily Telegraph –the main conservative newspaper in the United Kingdom– reproduced in its pages an internal and theoretically secret memo signed by a former editorial advisor named Michael Prescott.
In his document Prescott states that, after several years being part of the BBC Editorial Standards and Guidelines Committeecould not remain silent any longer in the face of what he considers “deep problems” in the coverage of issues such as Trump, racial diversity, gender issues and the Gaza war.
“And from what I have witnessed,” Prescott wrote, “I fear the problems may be even more widespread than my summary suggests.”
Goodbye to the US market?
The BBC is considered the main British media and, in addition, it has a substantial difference with other reference media such as the New York Times in the United States. BBC news is consumed by 74% of British adults, while news from the New York Timesto continue with the same example, do not reach 25% of American households.
To this we must add its international prestige. A prestige that it has resorted to in recent times to increase its presence in –precisely– the United States.
Not so long ago – at the beginning of this month – the magazine Columbia Journalism Review It explained in its pages that since 2022 the BBC has doubled its presence on American soil. The idea: to gain a foothold in a media ecosystem polarized to the extreme and to do so thanks to the lack of interest – the British network argued – in taking sides on one of the two ideological trenches. To be, let’s say, a kind of information arbiter.
“We do not assume an ideological position on the part of our audience,” he then told him. Kevin PonniahBBC regional director for the United States, to Columbia Journalism Review. “Our journalists are completely impartial.”
Shortly after that statement, Telegraph published the aforementioned Prescott report accusing the network of precisely the opposite and from then until now: with a possible billion-dollar lawsuit hovering over its offices and countless journalists who respect and love the BBC – such as Sam Knight in the magazine The New Yorker o Marina Hyde in The Guardian– saying that things should have been done differently.
“Although legal experts consider the possibility of a lawsuit by Trump against the BBC weak, it is possible that the president does not need to win in court,” explained the aforementioned Joel Simon. “Trump could resort to other strategies – such as, for example, denying visas or invoking the Foreign Agents Registration Law– to weaken the BBC’s operations in the United States.”