The BBC misled viewers by doctoring a video of President Donald Trump to make it appear he was encouraging the Capitol protest on Jan. 6, 2021, according to a whistleblower memo viewed by the Telegraph.
The corporation aired the video during a Panorama program titled "Trump: A Second Chance," which was broadcast a week before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
The spliced-together version made it seem as though Trump said: "We're gonna walk down to the Capitol and I'll be with you, and we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not gonna have a country anymore."
But Trump actually said: "We're gonna walk down, and I'll be there with you. We're gonna walk down — we're gonna walk down any one you want, but I think right here, we're gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we're gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.
"We're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you'll never take back our country with weakness; you have to show strength, and you have to be strong. ... I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
The memo, written by Michael Prescott, a former journalist who spent three years as an independent external adviser to the broadcaster's Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC) before leaving the role in June, said the news outlet's managers "refused to accept there had been a breach of standards."
He also said he warned Samir Shah, the BBC chairman, of the "very, very dangerous precedent" set by Panorama but received no reply.
"I departed [from the advisory role] with profound and unresolved concerns about the BBC … my view is that the Executive repeatedly failed to implement measures to resolve highlighted problems, and in many cases simply refused to acknowledge there was an issue at all," he wrote in a cover letter sent with his dossier.
Prescott directed pointed criticism at Jonathan Munro, the BBC's senior controller of news content, and Deborah Turness, the chief executive of BBC News.
"I have been surprised at just how defensive Deborah and Jonathan in particular have been whenever issues are raised," he said in the memo.
"Firm and transparent action plans to prevent the re-occurrence of problems are in short supply – and so, as you can see, errors are repeated time and again."
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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