BBC v Trump
The BBC should see him off.
A Telegraph report triggered by the leak of a dossier about supposed BBC bias in which a Panorama programme Broadcast in October 2024 was alleged to have misrepresented Donald Trump has resulted in the resignation of BBC director general, Tim Davie, and head of news, Deborah Turness.
Deborah Turness wanted to apologise immediately, but was prevented by the BBC board. Samir Shah said the BBC had to respond to the DCMS, which happened a week later. This was foolish, but possibly deliberate. The fault with the Panorama programme was a crass edit of two Trump sentences; it gave a false impression of what occurred in a his January 6th speech, but not a false representation of of what took place. This might have diffused the situation, but that was not the aim of right wing BBC insiders.
The Panorama programme was one of a number of examples highlighted by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, who detailed his concerns about the broadcaster’s impartiality in his report in May 2025. Much of what was contained in the report was addressed by the BBC at the time. Most of it had been corrected and accepted by news teams.
Prescott was appointed by Robbie Gibb, An ex BBC employee who was press secretary to Teressa May, Conservative Prime Minister, and was one of the founders of GB News. Gibb is a non-executive BBC board member appointed by Boris Johnson, who has taken on the role of being an ‘‘impartiality Tzar.’’
The argument goes that, from his seat on the Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee, Gibb orchestrated the content reviews that helped inform Prescott’s memo. These reviews were led by David Grossman, who overlapped with Gibb on BBC show Newsnight in the noughties and acted as an advisor to the Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee. Grossman looked for supposed bias, but exclusively of ‘left wing’ bias. Prescott’s report accused the BBC of bias against Israel in favour of Hamas, which the BBC disputes. Gibb is involved in control of the Jewish Chronicle.
Many BBC insiders believe this crisis to be a right wing coup. The right wing press hate the BBC for its dominance on online news. Right wing parties hate its popularity, even in the USA, and respect for impartiality.
Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for a billion dollars. If I was the BBC chair, I’d say, we made a minor error in a programme which was totally accurate and a perfectly good documentary of that period. Sue us in the UK, if you wish, but it will cost you ten times as much as you could get awarded. (It wouldn’t actually get to court; there is a twelve month limit for libel.) Sue us in Florida, and you will struggle to find anyone who saw the programme in 2024. We will, however, enjoy defending ourselves by showing the programme to a Jury, along with the footage from January 6th, and testimony from rioters in court, who said they were only there because you asked to them be there and fight. The US public might like that reminder.
UPDATE:
James Ball, (i Paper, New World) has pointed out Michael Prescott himself doctored Trump quote in his anti-BBC report.
The extracts from Trump’s Jan 6th speech quoted in the ‘‘leaked’’ BBC dossier were themselves selectively rearranged to make the speech seem less aggressive. https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-exclusive-the-error-at-the-heart-of-trumps-bbc-attack/