Source: Radio New Zealand
The BBC’s top boss and news chief have both resigned. HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP
The BBC’s top boss and its news chief had both resigned late on Remembrance Sunday in the UK – the day the victims of war are remembered.
Ironic perhaps for the BBC, because it wasn’t just that editing error in a year-old documentary about Donald Trump that created this crisis. An ongoing culture war that’s bigger than the BBC was part of the backdrop.
On Friday the BBC’s chair told the White House he and the Corporation were sorry for the error, “but strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim.”
The BBC has been accustomed to political pressure and criticism for over 100 years. But the US president taking credit for making it accountable for fake news was a headspinning development for former BBC TV journalist Lewis Goodall.
“A foreign head of government is saying he got them sacked or forced their resignation. And it is not just Donald Trump claiming credit for this. It is this curious, potentially quite sinister alliance between the President, Boris Johnson and the Daily Telegraph,” he said in his News Agents podcast.
But how did one editing error topple the BBC’s top boss and its news chief – a full year after it actually aired without any controversy at the time?
Bad edit, bad news
The fateful mistake was in an episode of Panorama, the BBC’s flagship news programme since 1953.
Trump – A Second Chance? sought to explain his appeal with supporters in the upcoming election. (Scepticism about the news media, incidentally, was one of the things those in the programme cited).
The Guardian gave it four stars out of five a year ago.
“It has ploughed its furrow well – taking time and care to unpick how we got here and why,” said the reviewer, who evidently didn’t notice the lack of care taken unpicking bits of Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021.
Trump said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
In the Panorama episode he was shown saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol . . . and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
Two chunks of the speech edited together were actually more than 50 minutes apart.
The edit was certainly deceptive – as was footage of Proud Boys marching in Washington before Trump spoke, though the programme indicated otherwise.
But the mistakes could have been easily fixed with superimposed timecodes, screen wipes or flashes to indicate time had passed.
A consultant on standards within the BBC – former TV journalist David Grossman – did notice and put it in a review of election coverage.
A former UK Sunday Times journalist later included it in a report to the BBC’s board members earlier this year, along with what he deemed other “serious and systemic” editorial failures the BBC had not confronted.
Last week, that was leaked to the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, a persistent critic of the BBC down the years, which called it ‘The devastating memo that plunged the BBC into crisis.’
“These concerns… were dismissed, ignored. But if members of its own editorial standards committee have no faith in the broadcaster, you have to ask, should we?” the Telegraph’s associate editor Gordon Rayner asked in an online video outlining the editing error.
Drama becomes a crisis
Bad news about the BBC has kept coming in the Daily Telegraph.
‘A third of the public believes BBC has left-wing bias,’ the paper said last Tuesday, reporting a snap poll after its BBC scoop last week.
But while 31 percent thought so, the [https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/53363-is-the-bbc-biased-what-the-public-think-following-the-davie-and-turness-resignations poll found some proportion didn’t know and 38 per cent didn’t think that was true.
When GB News hosts accused the BBC of ‘rewriting history’ with the Donald Trump edit, Roger Bolton – a former host of the TV show Right to Reply – told them it really wasn’t a material error.
“The overall programme was fair – but that editing was not fair and should not have been done. And it’s wrong of the BBC not to come out and explain the circumstances,” Bolton said in what GB News breathlessly billed as a Heated clash over Donald Trump’s targeting of BBC over impartiality SCANDAL‘
“But to use one small example to suggest that the whole organisation is biased is also wrong,” Bolton added.
Adam Boulton – a former political editor at Rupert Murdoch-owned Sky News UK – also reckoned there was a campaign against the BBC.
“What we’re seeing is media organisations such as the Telegraph – which frankly are vastly inferior to the BBC when it comes to partisanship and balance – managing to set an agenda and to stir up a political response,” he told the BBC News Channel.
Here, Newstalk ZB’s go-to guy for UK news Enda Brady – also a former Sky News reporter – said it was “a very big deal.”
“This was not something that was just done by accident,” he said.
Zb’s Drive host Heather du Plessis-Allan was also convinced.
“If you thought that the media was unfair on Trump, now you’ve been proven right. If you thought that the media was soft on Hamas, now you’ve been proven right. If you thought that there was all this stuff going on where the media had fixed views on trans issues, now you’ve been proven right,” she told ZB listeners.
“That whistleblower’s dossier that was leaked last week… for the most part will explain all of it to you,” she said.
But she didn’t explain why one advisor’s personal report was gospel on the BBC’s news.
Former Downing Street communications chief Alastair Campbell – a central figure in a political row that brought down BBC leaders in 2004 – didn’t think the Prescott report made the case of bias against Trump.
“It said that the ‘eating the dogs, eating the cats’ – thing was given disproportionate coverage. He’s the most talked about person on the planet and he said that! (The report) said the BBC gave disproportionate coverage to a single poll and should have done an equally aggressive (Panorama) documentary about Kamala Harris. It’s just nuts,” he said on the podcast The Rest is Politics.
Former BBC news presenter Emily Maitlis also pointed out rival media had their own reasons for bagging the BBC over mistakes.
“(The BBC) is the most-read, the most-enjoyed website in the world. It operates 24 hours a day from Australia and America and Asia – all over the place. That’s what the Mail, The Times and the Telegraph would like to have,” she said on her current podcast The News Agents.
“The way it has been reshaped is that you’re being cheated by the BBC… and the BBC is lying to you. If the papers carry on telling the British public they can’t trust the BBC, then people start believing it.”
But the BBC’s critics condemned the mistake as more than that.
After the resignation news broke on Monday morning, the first person on the line on the BBC’s own news channel was Kelvin McKenzie, formerly Rupert Murdoch’s top tabloid editor and then the boss of a rival radio company.
“When you start doing that to the President of the United States, what are you doing to somebody cleaning a window in Preston?” McKenzie asked.
“I don’t criticise the BBC over straightforward political coverage. But I do blame them when looking at some of the social issues facing our country – and then getting on the wrong side of almost every argument,” another of the BBC’s loudest critics and former rivals, David Elstein, said on the same channel soon after.
The notion that news coverage should be based on public opinion was rebutted by former Conservative party politician and chair of the BBC Trust Lord Chris Patten.
“I don’t think that we should allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that the BBC is only any good if it reflects the prejudice of the last person who shouted at it,” he told BBC radio.
Later David Elstein told BBC radio host Stephen Nolan the BBC had run scared on transgender identity. Nolan himself made a 10-part series on the topic for the BBC last year, which included critics of the influence of the Stonewall organisation within the BBC.
Trans rights and Gaza coverage were also in the report on editorial failings by the BBC advisor Michael Prescott which kicked off this crisis once it leaked to the media.
But last Monday departing BBC news chief executive Deborah Turness said forcefully: “BBC News is not institutionally biased. That’s why it’s the world’s most trusted news provider.”
Enemies within?
Some critics have claimed the impartiality problem is not in BBC journalism, but the oversight of it – and the Corporation’s governance.
The 13-strong BBC board includes several business leaders and lawyers, but only three members with any substantial record in journalism.
The key committee looking after editorial standards includes Sir Robbie Gibb, a former journalist who served as PR man for Conservative Party PM Theresa May before Boris Johnson appointed him to the BBC board.
“He does not pretend to be impartial on issues related to British politics or Israel so the BBC is stuck with him as a supposedly objective arbiter on such matters,” former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger wrote.
Michael Prescott – the author of the now notorious dossier – was a PR executive for a company with links to the Conservative Party for nine years before he was appointed as an advisor to the BBC’s editorial standards committee.
This week Emily Maitlis claimed six former BBC colleagues had told her they believed a kind of internal coup to influence BBC news had taken place.
What happens next?
Jonathan Munro, Deputy CEO BBC News & Director of Journalism supplied
The man in charge of the news division now is Jonathan Munro, criticised in Michael Prescott’s report for not responding adequately to concern about the Trump documentary edit and BBC’s Gaza/Israel coverage.
When the Israel/Gaza war was just weeks old, the ruling Conservative Party was already criticising the BBC’s coverage. Home secretary Suella Braverman and former prime minister Liz Truss both urged Britons to switch to GB News.
“The criticism of the BBC from politicians is as old as the BBC itself. Just because they’re habitual critics doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but we’ve got a well developed set of editorial guidelines which have stood the test of time over many, many difficult stories,” Munro told Mediawatch at the time.
Munro told Mediawatch he had faith in the BBC’s existing standards withstanding political pressure. He’ll need that faith now.
Roger Bolton is no BBC apologist. For 23 years he hosted the radio show Feedback, based on listeners’ complaints about the BBC. He also presented a similar TV show – Right to Reply – on Channel Four.
After the BBC dropped him in 2023, he launched the independent podcast Beebwatch, for “people who care about, or are frustrated by, the BBC.”
In the middle of heavy traffic
Former panorama editor and podcaster Roger Bolton on one of many recent interviews about the BBC Trump editing scandal. GB News
“What this demonstrates is a breakdown in the governance of the BBC – not disastrously so, but very bad for its reputation. And it’s encouraged by President Trump trying to rewrite history and pursue the BBC for a ludicrous amount of money,” Roger Bolton told Mediawatch.
“There was a week before the BBC said anything. As it happened, most of the concerns that had been raised in that dossier had been addressed and action taken. But you wouldn’t know that because the BBC didn’t say anything.
“The reason it didn’t say anything was that it was split at the top. I think there’s some substance to the allegation a number of right-wing members of that editorial standards committee have real doubts about BBC’s impartiality and welcome this opportunity to create trouble.
“The chair of the BBC, who should stand above all this and should act in the public interest, was part of that committee which decided to ignore the problem – and then remain silent about it.
“We know Trump sues people – or says he’s going to sue them – and he quotes ridiculous amounts of money. In the US, large media companies – for whom news is only a small part – are happy to settle even though they could win their case because they’ve got big deals that will require Trump’s or the Senate’s approval.
“He may decide to take it out on the BBC and refuse them access to his press conferences. He could go further and take measures to stop the BBC operating in the US.
“But he’ll only be there for another three years. The BBC has got to safeguard its reputation. If it gives in to him, what would the rest of the world think?
“Tim Davie’s major problem was that he had no real experience of journalism. He didn’t appoint a deputy who was a hardened old hack who knew what went on in cutting rooms and sniffed the danger.
“These problems indicate that the BBC which has slimmed down a lot and had to cut back. Standards are not as high as they were or aren’t being enforced as well.
“I made mistakes. You acknowledge them and you tell the public and you explain it. You don’t go too defensive. But in this country, people are so polarised they see a balanced sort of programme as one prejudiced against them.”
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
