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The BBC is expected to apologise on Monday for the way in which a speech by the US president, Donald Trump, was edited in an episode of Panorama. The show is 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 a memo published by the Telegraph.
What happened?
Details of a “dossier” compiled by Prescott were published in the Telegraph over the course of last week. The main criticism of Prescott’s memo focused on an edition of Panorama, broadcast a week before the US election. He accused the BBC of selectively editing a Trump speech.
Prescott also raised concerns about BBC Arabic. He claimed that a review by the BBC journalist David Grossman had highlighted “systemic problems within BBC Arabic” that represented anti-Israel bias.
The 19-page dossier is also reported to have criticised the BBC’s coverage of transgender issues, saying the broadcaster had been “captured by a small group of [staff] promoting the Stonewall view” of gender identity issues, and that its LGBT desk would “decline to cover any stories raising difficult questions”.
Who is Michael Prescott?
Prescott is a former journalist who went on to become a corporate adviser. His roles included 10 years as chief political correspondent and then political editor of the Sunday Times, and eight years as corporate affairs director for BT.
He currently holds roles at Hanover Communications and on the BBC committee overseeing editorial guidelines and standards.
Sources have told the Guardian that Robbie Gibb – who served as director of communications to Theresa May in Downing Street between 2017 and 2019 – was instrumental in the appointment of Prescott as an adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee. The pair are reported to be friends. Concerns have previously been raised about the role of Gibb, who joined the BBC board when Boris Johnson was in Downing Street.
What happened with the Trump edit?
Prescott’s concerns regard clips edited together from sections of the US president’s speech on 6 January 2021 for the documentary Trump: A Second Chance?, which was broadcast by the BBC the week before last year’s US election.
The edited clip suggested that Trump told the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.” But the words were taken from sections of his speech almost an hour apart. It did not include a section in which Trump said he wanted supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”.
What has the reaction been?
Prescott’s memo has led to criticism of the BBC from senior Conservatives. Boris Johnson told the Telegraph that the corporation’s director general, Tim Davie, “must either explain or resign”. He said the BBC had been “caught red-handed in multiple acts of leftwing bias”.
The Tory party leader, Kemi Badenoch, said “heads should roll”. Johnson posted on social media last week: “Is anyone at the BBC going to take responsibility – and resign?”
Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, described the BBC as “100% fake news” and a “propaganda machine” after the allegations emerged.
Others have put the row down to the rightwing press’s ideological obsession with undermining the BBC.
The BBC presenter Nick Robinson said on the Today programme there was a “genuine” concern regarding the broadcaster’s editorial standards and mistakes, however he said he believed there was a “political campaign by people who want to destroy the organisation”.
The veteran broadcaster John Simpson said Robinson was “exactly right”.
The British journalist Adam Boulton, a former political editor of Sky News, said on X that he thought claims of bias on this occasion were “BS [bullshit]”, adding it was “fake news to suggest Donald Trump did not egg on what happened on 6 January”.
