‘Fake news’: How edited Trump video created another fine mess for the BBC

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London: The BBC is caught in a ferocious dispute about its coverage of US President Donald Trump after the leak of an internal report that found it had “completely misled” viewers by airing an edited video.

And now the White House, having already gone to war with large parts of the American media, is ready for a fight with the Beeb.

The argument has reached fever pitch in the UK as critics of the national broadcaster, most of them from the conservative side of politics, accuse it of leaning so far to the left that it could not see its own bias in the reporting on Trump.

Leading the charge, former prime minister Boris Johnson has declared that BBC director-general Tim Davie must “explain or resign” because the leaked dossier concluded there were several cases of misleading and unfair coverage.

A key point is that the confrontation with the White House centres on a single video in a program produced for the BBC by an outside production house. It is not about the reports filed by BBC correspondents in Washington or elsewhere.

The scene at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 as Trump supporters invade the building.

The edited video showed Trump speaking to supporters on January 6 and urging them to go to the Capitol with him to show they believed the election the previous November had been stolen and that Joe Biden was not elected president.

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell,” Trump said in the video aired on the BBC.

The edited video spliced together two statements Trump uttered at different stages of a long address. When he said he would walk with supporters to the Capitol, he continued without the “fight like hell” remark.

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” he said in the full address.

Trump supporters inside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“And we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.

“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

The documentary, called Trump: A Second Chance? was shown on the BBC’s Panorama program last year and was produced by an outside company, October Films, which is based in London. It was not made by BBC news reporters. Even so, the national broadcaster is responsible for what it aired.

The editing was egregious. It was also unnecessary. Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” in general terms toward the end of his address, and a few sentences later asked them to walk to the Capitol. The documentary misled viewers when it could have simply shown them what he actually said.

The national broadcaster, like the ABC, is routinely accused of being too left wing.

The London Telegraph broke the story of this flawed program by revealing the leaked documents last Monday. The review of the Trump documentary was written by Michael Prescott, a former editorial advisor to the BBC Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee and a former political correspondent at The Sunday Times. He found the BBC had treated viewers badly.

“It was completely misleading to edit the clip in the way Panorama aired it,” said the leaked assessment. “The fact that he did not explicitly exhort supporters to go down and fight at Capitol Hill was one of the reasons there were no federal charges for incitement to riot.”

Now, a parliamentary committee wants the BBC chairman, Samir Shah, to explain what he is doing about editorial standards. It has called Prescott to appear at a hearing this Wednesday.

The BBC chairman is cornered. The Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday night in London (about 7am on Sunday, AEDT) that he will write to the parliamentary committee to apologise for the blunder.

The wider context

This is not the BBC’s only headache. It is under fire for reprimanding one of its own hosts, Martine Croxall, for correcting the phrase “pregnant people” and adding the word “women” live on air.

It is also in trouble over its coverage of Gaza.

The leaked documents included warnings that the BBC’s Arabic-language news service had minimised the suffering of Israel and given favoured treatment to Hamas. While the main BBC site carried articles critical of Hamas, the Arabic service carried none.

But it is the documentary about Trump that will cause the greatest lasting damage. The national broadcaster, like the ABC, is routinely accused of being too left wing. It navigates regular disputes with parliament over its coverage. Arguments with the White House are different.

Trump is merciless when he has a fight with the media. He sued CBS and won a $24.6 million settlement. He sued the American ABC and gained $23 million for his presidential library.

He does not win every time: he could not keep Jimmy Kimmel off the air, and he lost the first round in his defamation claim against News Corporation. But he seizes on these disputes to find willing supporters for his core argument that the mainstream media cannot be trusted.

‘Purposefully dishonest’

Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, bought into the debate when the London Telegraph asked for her view, and she was damning of the BBC.

BBC director-general Tim Davie is facing calls to step down.

“This purposefully dishonest, selectively edited clip by the BBC is further evidence that they are total, 100 per cent fake news that should no longer be worth the time on the television screens of the great people of the United Kingdom,” she said.

This was one documentary by an external production company, not a series of reports by BBC journalists. But it was an egregious case of misleading the audience. Viewers can make up their own minds about Trump by seeing and hearing his actual remarks.

The BBC chairman is wise to apologise, but will that be enough? A hunt is on for someone to take the blame – and take the fall – for this mistake. Now that the White House is angry, an apology may not be enough.