BBC newsroom rift deepens; Newsnight accused of distorting Trump speech.
The Telegraph wrote that in June 2022, a clip of Trump’s speech was broadcast on the BBC’s Newsnight programme, showing him encouraging his supporters to commit violence, but the effect was the result of a secret edit that spliced together two sentences nearly an hour apart. This is exactly the technique that was exposed in the Panorama affair, and now, with the new document, the dimensions of the BBC’s crisis have doubled.
This time, however, it is not just the “type of editing” that is at issue; the Telegraph says that warnings about the clipping were raised at the time. Mick Mulvaney, the former chief of staff to the US President, told the presenter Christy Wark on air that night that the clip had been spliced together and different parts of the speech had been spliced together. However, the presenter immediately changed the subject, and the news continued as usual. The next day, according to a whistleblower present at the editorial meeting, the question of the clip was “quickly dismissed,” and no serious investigation was conducted.
In such a climate, the new Telegraph leak, just before Trump’s term ends, has multiplied the pressure on the BBC. Now the question is more acute than ever whether these errors were a series of “case-by-case errors” or a sign of a deeper rift in the oversight mechanism and editorial culture of this old media outlet.
On the other hand, Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, has demanded in a formal letter the complete removal of the Panorama documentary, a public apology, and compensation, and has warned that if the BBC does not act by Friday evening, he will file a legal claim of $1 billion against the network. The BBC has only confirmed that it received the letter and will respond “in due course,” but has continued to deny the allegations of organizational bias.