Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
The BBC will on Monday apologise for the misleading editing of a Donald Trump speech in a Panorama documentary, as the public broadcaster tries to defuse criticism that its coverage shows bias.
BBC chair Samir Shah will apologise for unintentionally misleading viewers in a letter to Caroline Dinenage, chair of the House of Commons culture, media and sport committee, according to a person close to the situation.
A BBC Panorama programme broadcast in October 2024 spliced together clips from separate parts of an inflammatory speech Trump made in Washington DC on January 6 2021, the day his supporters raided Congress as lawmakers ratified the president’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 US election.
Trump in the programme was shown telling his supporters that “we’re going to walk down to the Capitol” and that they would “fight like hell”, a comment he made in a different part of his speech.
In fact, he followed up that specific remark about walking to the Capitol by saying they would “cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women”.
The US president, who was re-elected last year, has continued to claim falsely that the 2020 election was rigged against him. The White House this week said the BBC was a “leftist propaganda machine”.
The BBC’s top executives have faced demands to answer allegations made in a letter to its board from Michael Prescott, a PR executive and former journalist, who spent three years as an adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial guidelines and standards committee.
Prescott’s letter, sent in September, accused the BBC of doctoring Trump’s speech and raised concerns over its reporting on Gaza and coverage of the transgender rights debate.
He claimed his concerns had been ignored by BBC management. Executives at the broadcaster told the Financial Times that many of the issues raised in the letter had been addressed.
The editing of the Trump speech, however, was the main area that the corporation’s management saw a fault had been committed, they added.
The BBC on Thursday held an emergency board call to discuss its response to concerns over impartiality and bias that have exposed rifts over standards at the top of the corporation.
The broadcaster’s head of news Deborah Turness wrote to staff on Friday saying that “it’s always difficult when the BBC becomes a story”.
Lisa Nandy, culture secretary, told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that she had spoken to Shah about the issues raised by Prescott’s letter.
“It isn’t just about the Panorama programme, although that is incredibly serious; there are a series of very serious allegations made, the most serious of which is that there is systemic bias in the way that difficult issues are reported at the BBC,” she said.
But she added that she was confident that Shah and BBC director-general Tim Davie were taking the issue seriously.
Prescott has been called to give evidence to the Commons media committee, which is probing the BBC’s editorial standards.
Dinenage said that “the BBC clearly has serious questions to answer regarding both its editorial standards and the way in which concerns are handled by senior management”.
The chair of the BBC’s regulator, Ofcom, has also written to Shah, urging him to “seriously” consider the concerns over impartiality.
On Thursday, former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson said that Davie “must either explain or resign”.
