The BBC’s Arrogance Will Be Its Downfall

The extent of the hubris is remarkable. The BBC has been caught out in an appalling act of disinformation. Panorama doctored a Donald Trump speech to falsely show him supporting rioting. This has been described as ‘a mistake’ – as if it were some kind of technical glitch. But the misrepresentation was clearly deliberate – Trump’s call to protest ‘peacefully’ was spliced and diced into a call to ‘fight’.

For the BBC, it was all in the cause of presenting Trump as a baddie. If there is a piece of inconvenient evidence which doesn’t fit that narrative, then it must be twisted to ensure it does. The BBC staff will smugly convince themselves this is morally justified, providing viewers with the ‘greater truth’.

The BBC chairman, Samir Shah, has apologised – but rather in the ‘sorry, not sorry’ tone of a petulant teenager. The editing of the Trump documentary did ‘give the impression of a direct call for violent action’ and was an ‘error of judgment’. Rather a serious one, you might think. But Shah goes on that it ‘was to convey the message of the speech made by President Trump so that Panorama’s audience could better understand how it had been received by President Trump’s supporters and what was happening on the ground at that time’. So that’s all right then. We should be grateful for learning what the BBC decided was Trump’s real message rather than what Trump actually said.

It’s not the only issue, of course. A letter to the BBC Board from Michael Prescott, a former external advisor to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee, highlighted a range of concerns. ‘The BBC has faced, and still faces, considerable criticism from the Jewish community and from cross-party parliamentarians across both Houses over its record in reporting the conflict in Gaza and, in particular, the coverage of BBC Arabic,’ says the letter. ‘In spite of this, and the findings of the internal BBC report, there is no sign of an open admission by the executive about systemic problems within BBC Arabic.’