Fightin' Words, by Bill Wanlund
Tim Davie, Director-General of the British Broadcasting Company, and Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News, resigned their positions on Nov.10, following charges that the broadcaster was "institutionally biased.” The allegations concerned a speech by President Trump which apparently had been edited for BBC’s news program “Panorama” to imply that Trump had encouraged the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot.
The version used on “Panorama” were all words that Trump had spoken in that speech - just not in their original order or context. On Jan. 6, Trump told the crowd gathered behind the White House, “we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down, we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women...”
Later in the speech – some 50 minutes later – Trump said, as he was enumerating his administration’s achievements and attributes, “…and we fight. We fight like hell…”
The edited version Panorama broadcast now had the President saying, “we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell!”
The Guardian helpfully posted a side-by-side comparison of that part of the original speech and the Panorama-edited version. Panorama’s video editors did a slick job: There’s no break in the audio; the video did a brief cutaway to the crowd to mask the splice-in of Trump’s “and I’ll be there with you…” comment.
Panorama’s act was intentional, but why go to all that trouble? True, the documentary was broadcast on Oct. 28, 2024, and you’d be forgiven if you considered there was a connection to the U.S. Presidential Election which would be held a week later.
But Panorama, popular as it may be in the UK, isn’t seen in the United States, and the number of eligible American voters who did see it and might have been influenced by it probably numbers in the low teens at most.
Trump left no doubt where he stood on the matter of marching on the Capitol, nor where he stood when it came to violence as a means to achieving his goals. In the Jan. 6 speech alone, he used the words “fight” or “fought” 26 times; he also said, “you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing.”
In that rambling, 70-minute speech laced with personal grievances he landed with full force on his ultimate target: Joe Biden. Trump warned, “If you don’t do that” (suggesting, i.e., if someone doesn’t interfere with Congress’s ratification of the 2020 election, then taking place in the Capitol), “you will have a president of the United States for four years, with his wonderful son (Hunter). You will have a president … who was voted on by a bunch of stupid people…You will have an illegitimate president… And we can't let that happen.”
As an admitted admirer of BBC news, I’m mystified by someone’s decision to jeopardize its reputation and even, possibly, its existence (Trump’s kneejerk reaction was to threaten the Beeb with a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit) by fabricating a quote that may well have expressed what Trump wanted to say but didn’t. Was it motivated by malice? Was it a TV producer’s instinct for the pithy quote that summarizes a story? Was it some mischievous technician’s bravado, saying, “look what I can do! LOL”?
Davie and Turness, the two senior BBC executives who resigned over the incident, did so through metaphorically clenched teeth. Both used the passive, non-attributive, “mistakes were made” apology model, and both donned the cloak of nobility by resigning and taking one for the team, while not acknowledging direct responsibility for the action. It's the expected way of handling a situation like this, when “mistakes are made” somewhere down the chain of command. If it works as designed, the scalps are collected and displayed, public bloodlust is sated, and the issue soon fades.
But there are risks with this kabuki. In the Trump speech alteration issue, the BBC lost two experienced and respected top officials. If Mr. Davie and/or Ms. Turness had prior knowledge of the fiddling - and I doubt it - then good riddance.
In any case, however, the BBC and its news division are likely in for a rough ride. In addition to this latest episode, BBC news has also come under recent criticism for its coverage of the Israel-Gaza war in Gaza, with some calling the coverage antisemitic, and for its reporting on LGBTQ issues.
The BBC has apologized to Trump for the manner in which the program was edited and promised there were no plans to rebroadcast the offending program. However, neither is the BBC planning to pay compensation, a spokesperson said.
As a public, non-commercial broadcaster in the UK, the BBC is funded by license fees collected from radio and TV users. NPR quoted one citizen as saying, “"If we have to pay a penny to Trump, then I'm sorry — I'm not going to pay my TV license," he said. "The world just seems to be frightened of him. I think the BBC needs to stand up to him."
Bill Wanlund is a PDCA Board Member, retired Foreign Service Officer, and freelance writer in the Washington, DC, area. His column, Worth Noting, appears occasionally in PD Today and the PDCA Blog; it seeks to address Public Diplomacy and related topics of interest to all.