“Deliberately dishonest” montage about Trump leads to BBC management being fired

The director general of the BBC, Tim Davie, and the executive chairman of BBC News, Deborah Turness, resigned this Sunday, following a report that targeted US President Donald Trump.

“It’s a sad day for the BBC”said, in a statement, the president of the British public broadcaster, Samir Shah.

At issue is a controversy over a report, in which the BBC is accused of having misleadingly presented the US president’s statements in a documentary on the information program Panorama”, broadcast in October 2024.

The case, revealed on Tuesday by the conservative newspaper, concerns a documentary broadcast a week before the US presidential elections on November 5, 2024.

A BBC is accused of having edited different parts of a Trump speech dated January 6, 2021, the day hundreds of supporters invaded the Capitol, insinuating that the US President told his supporters that he would walk with them to the Capitol to “fight like demons”.

However, in the original sentenceTrump said: “Let’s walk to the Capitol and let’s encourage our courageous senators and representatives in Congress.” The expression “fight like demons” actually corresponded to another passage.

“Deliberately dishonest” editing

The British Minister for Culture, Lisa Nandythis Sunday considered the case “extremely serious”and the president of the BBC, Samir Shah, was called to provide clarifications before a parliamentary committee on Monday.

Speaking to BBC News, Nandy expressed concern about the BBC’s editorial decisions, which “do not always meet the highest standards”.

“This is not just about the Panorama program, although it is extremely serious, but about a series of very serious allegationsthe most serious of which is the existence of systemic prejudice in the way difficult topics are treated by the BBC”, stated the Minister of Culture.

Quoted in the Telegraph, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt denounced a “deliberately dishonest” montagecriticizing “100% false information”.

The BBC was also criticized on October 17 by the British media regulator (Ofcom) for having “violated the dissemination rules” in a report in Gaza, in which the main narrator, a child, was the son of a senior leader of the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas.

Ofcom considered that the failure to specify this family relationship “constituted a source of substantial deception”.