Doctored BBC documentary becomes ammunition for anti-woke voices as Trump threatens legal action

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is in hot water over editing US President Donald Trump’s speech to make it look as if he was inciting the January 6th riot.

In an unprecedented move, both the general director of Britain’s public-service broadcaster, Tim Davie, and the head of news, Deborah Turness, have resigned after criticism of the BBC for airing a documentary that misled viewers by editing Trump’s speech.

The reactions were swift and unforgiving – BBC has long faced bias accusations, including from right-wing groups and governments, which responded to the latest controversy by doubling down on their criticism of the broadcaster.

While the BBC is a British institution, primarily funded by the British taxpayers through TV license payments, its influence is global, and so are its detractors. Perhaps unsurprisingly, President Trump didn’t hold back in his reaction to the resignations.

“The TOP people in the BBC, including TIM DAVIE, the BOSS, are all quitting/FIRED, because they were caught ‘doctoring’ my very good (PERFECT!) speech of January 6th,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The president went on to thank The Telegraph, a British daily, for exposing “corrupt” journalists. The paper was the first to publish the details of a leaked internal BBC memo last week that suggested the documentary stitched together two parts of Trump’s speech to make it appear as though he was explicitly encouraging the US Capitol riot.

“These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election. On top of everything else, they are from a Foreign Country, one that many consider our Number One Ally. What a terrible thing for Democracy!” Trump said in the post.

In a separate statement, the White House derided the BBC as “100% fake news.” The corporation also confirmed it received a letter from Trump threatening legal action and will respond “in due course.” The letter demanded that the BBC apologize, issue a full and fair retraction, and "appropriately compensate" Trump by Friday (November 14th).

Otherwise, the letter said Trump would sue the BBC for $1 billion. Trump has previously sued CBS, CNN, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal before.

In addition to claims BBC altered Trump’s speech, the leaked memo also said there were “systemic problems” of bias in BBC Arabic’s coverage of the war in Gaza and also suggested it promoted pro-trans views.

The Israeli government responded by accusing the BBC of spreading “disinformation that fuels antisemitism and radicalization.”

In a post on X, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said that “the problem extends beyond the BBC” and that “far too many news outlets are promoting politics disguised as facts, amplifying Hamas’s fake campaigns.”

In its own post, Israel’s embassy in the UK said that BBC’s reporting, especially by BBC Arabic, had “too often distorted reality, omitted vital context, and provided a platform for antisemitic and extremist narratives.”

It said it hoped that “this moment will serve as a turning point” and BBC will “seize the opportunity to restore public trust by ensuring fair, factual, and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East.”

LGB Alliance, a British anti-trans advocacy group, welcomed the resignations of Davie and Turness “amid multiple scandals of bias including censoring the voices of women and gay people who reject identity doctrine.”

“We very much hope for a courageous new broom that will take difficult decisions and restore credibility to the BBC,” the group said.

Tommy Robinson, a British far right activist, also took a swipe at the broadcaster, claiming that “before the BBC lied about [Donald Trump], they lied about me,” accusing Panorama, the same program that aired the Trump documentary, of doing a “vile” story on him too.

In a later post criticizing Sky News, a commercial British broadcaster, Robinson declared that “legacy media is finished,” echoing other social media commenters critical of mainstream media and its perceived “woke” bias.

What did the internal memo say?

The documentary, titled Trump: A Second Chance?, was broadcast on the Panorama program a week before the 2024 US presidential election. According to the leaked memo, the two sections that were stitched together were originally 50 minutes apart.

In a speech in Washington DC on January 6th, 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."

However, in the BBC edit for Panorama, 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."

The memo was written by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee who left the role in June.

In the document, he expressed concern about what he said was a lack of action to address bias in BBC Arabic’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and suggested that the broadcaster’s coverage of trans issues was effectively “censored” by its specialist LGBT reporters promoting a pro-trans agenda.

Prescott said he felt “despair” when the issues came to light and BBC management failed to address them. Among other claims, he said the BBC had published “ill-researched” stories on racism and had “selection bias” against sending push notifications for stories about migrants and asylum seekers.

The memo leaked after several other incidents where the broadcaster’s impartiality was questioned. It faced criticism over failing to disclose that the narrator of a recent documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, which the UK considers a terrorist organization.

It was also ruled that the BBC broke its editorial guidelines after a broadcast of a Glastonbury set in which punk duo Bob Vylan led a chant saying, “death, death to the IDF,” in reference to the Israel Defence Forces.

The BBC was also criticized for upholding impartiality complaints over a facial expression made by presenter Martine Croxall, who earlier this year changed a live BBC News Channel script from “pregnant people” to “pregnant women.”

The broadcaster’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) said that "giving the strong impression of expressing a personal view on a controversial matter, even if inadvertently, falls short of the BBC's expectations of its presenters and journalists in relation to impartiality.”

BBC admits error but not bias accusations

Tim Davie, who resigned as general director, acknowledged that “there have been some mistakes made” and that it was his “ultimate responsibility.” Turness, his head of news, said she resigned because “the buck stops with me.”

She insisted that BBC News “is not institutionally biased.” Responding to Trump’s comments, she said that BBC journalists “are not corrupt” and are “hardworking people who strive for impartiality.”

BBC Chair Samir Shah said in an interview with Katie Razzall, who described the development as “seismic,” that it was "simply not true" that the organization had done nothing to address the issues. Earlier, he apologized for an “error of judgment” in the Trump speech edit and said he may apologize to Trump personally.

The BBC chair is appointed by the government for four years. The position’s role is to protect the organization’s independence and make sure it delivers on its mission.

Politicians across political divides have called for the BBC to use the controversy as an opportunity for reform.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said: “The BBC has a vital role in an age of disinformation… where there's a clear argument for a robust, impartial British news service to deliver, and that case is stronger than ever.”

However, the Downing Street did not agree that the BBC was corrupt or institutionally biased, he said.

Oppositional Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the broadcaster’s new leaders will need to deliver “genuine reform,” while Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing Reform UK party, which currently leads the opinion polls, said it was the BBC’s “last chance.”

Farage said the BBC should be “slimmed down” and compete with other broadcasters on a subscription model, calling the license fee “unsustainable.”

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said the BBC must “turn over a new leaf,” but later called on other party leaders in a letter to protect the broadcaster from “foreign powers” following Trump’s response to the situation.

“The BBC belongs to Britain, not Trump. We must defend it together,” Davey said.