Kass readers may not regularly follow the daily machinations of the British Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as the BBC (or more informally, Auntie Beeb). The BBC reaches close to half a billion people worldwide each week and more than 50 million in the US.
It is regarded in many circles as the most influential news organization in the world. However, recent important developments at the BBC, involving America and Donald Trump, merit our interest here, because they are particularly instructive about the sad state of journalism in general.
First the bombshell: Several days before the 2024 presidential election, a BBC documentary broadcast part of a Jan. 6 Trump speech in which he says, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you and we fight. We fight like hell.”
The clear suggestion was that Trump fomented the 2021 Capitol riot with his words and was not fit to be elected.
Except Trump never said those specific words in any single quote. This was a deceptive edit, made by splicing two separate remarks, spoken nearly an hour apart. What Trump actually said in the first part was that people should march “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol and “make your voices heard.”
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