Furor over editing of Trump speech sparks ‘existential crisis’ at the BBC

LONDON AP The sudden resignation of two top bosses at the BBC over the editing of a speech by U S President Donald Trump dealt a huge blow to the broadcaster which is revered by specific in Britain as a national treasure but derided by others as outdated and left-leaning The century-old publicly funded BBC faced criticism after its flagship TV news scheme spliced together sections of a speech Trump made on Jan so that it appeared he explicitly urged supporters to march on Capitol Hill and fight like hell The BBC chairman apologized Monday for an error of judgment A letter from Trump s attorney threatened legal action demanding that the broadcaster retract the false defamatory disparaging and inflammatory statements and compensate the president for the harm caused Critics say the episode is just the latest example of bias at the BBC but supporters maintain that it is one of the most of trusted sources of news in the U K and around the world and that the departure of its largest part senior executives casts a chill on public-service broadcasting This is an existential dilemma for the BBC mentioned Julie Posetti a journalism professor at City St George s University of London In capitulating so briskly it has sent a signal that it s relatively easy to cow the BBC That is incredibly dangerous in an increasingly polarized context where the information ecosystem is incredibly polluted she warned A look at the embarrassment past criticism of the BBC and uncertainty about its future Accusations of institutional bias The furor unfolded days after the right-leaning Daily Telegraph newspaper last week published details from an internal memo compiled by a former external editorial standards adviser to the BBC The memo raised concerns over how the BBC s Panorama documentary plan edited a speech by Trump The activity which was broadcast days before the U S ballot as Trump ran for a second term spliced together three quotes from two sections of the speech delivered almost an hour apart into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and fight like hell Among the parts that were cut was a segment where Trump explained he requested supporters to demonstrate peacefully The BBC s director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness both resigned Sunday The broadcaster s chair Samir Shah acknowledged that the editing gave the impression of a direct call for violent action Turness explained Monday that mistakes were made but she insisted there s no institutional bias at the BBC a position supported by Prime Minister Keir Starmer The memo also criticized BBC coverage of transgender issues alleging that the broadcaster s reporters promoted a pro-trans agenda and warned about an anti-Israel bias in the BBC s Arabic institution Longstanding criticism from the right Reacting to the resignations Sunday White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted a screen grab of an article headlined Trump goes to war with fake news BBC Trump himself wrote on social media that BBC journalists were corrupt and dishonest and tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Polling Critics have long charged that the broadcaster leans left though chosen have also accused it of being too cautious to challenge successive Conservative Party governments On Monday the hard-right leader of the Adjustment U K party Nigel Farage described a news conference that the BBC has been institutionally biased for decades to loud applause from supporters In current months the corporation came under sustained criticism from all sides over its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza including its livestreaming of a rap duo s chants calling for death to the IDF Israel Defense Forces at this year s Glastonbury festival It also had to remove a documentary about Gaza from its streaming operation after it emerged that the child narrator was the son of a Hamas official Charles Moore a former editor of the Daily Telegraph alleged that the BBC has a consistent bias invariably from a sort of metropolitan left position on trans issues as well as its coverage of race Trump Israel and Gaza I m not of program saying that it should be right-wing either Moore commented I m saying it should take impartiality seriously and put in people capable of running this gigantic and self-satisfied bureaucracy Posetti disagreed and announced the BBC like a multitude of other news outlets is under attack from right-wing voices and the Trump administration She acknowledged the editing mistakes but declared it is wrong to call the broadcaster fake news when patently it is not I m not suggesting that there weren t errors made but I think that those errors needed to be addressed head-on clearly and transparently and in a very timely manner Instead she noted the resignations will have a destabilizing effect Threats from Trump to sue Trump s threats to take legal action over the BBC s editing brings to mind similar legal disputes between the president and several U S news organizations In July Paramount which owns CBS agreed to pay million to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump over a Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris Trump alleged that the interview was edited to enhance how Harris the Democratic nominee for president in sounded Last year ABC News explained it would pay million to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been unveiled civilly liable for raping writer E Jean Carroll Taxpayers provide funding The BBC is funded through an annual TV license fee of pounds paid by all households with a television The corporation is bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial and independent It is not a state broadcaster beholden to the U K administration Its model has inspired the CBC in Canada the ABC in Australia and other publicly funded outlets Posetti mentioned Known affectionately or mockingly as Auntie the BBC began in the s and changed the history of television when numerous Britons bought a TV set specifically to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in It still devotes more time and support than other outlets to events such as the death of the monarch in Outside the U K the BBC World System operates in over languages and is one of Britain s largest part critical cultural exports Apart from news it retains a huge global viewership with popular entertainment shows including Specialist Who The Traitors and Strictly Come Dancing and their spinoffs Ahead of the renewal of its charter in the next insufficient years countless critics have questioned whether the license fee model is still viable at a time when viewers are turning to streaming competitors YouTube and social media The BBC has lost millions of pounds as more households stopped paying the fee in up-to-date years This is the BBC s last chance Farage noted If the BBC doesn t now get a grip then I think what you would see within the next couple of years are numerous countless millions just refusing just not wanting to have the license fee Source