A bad week for the BBC…

…but not just because of its mistakes

The BBC’s on the rack – again. I guess as most people know the BBC’s Director General and CEO of News have just resigned and the corporation is in crisis as a result of a misleading edit in a BBC Panorama TV documentary.

The main accuser – leading the charge against the BBC is the Daily Telegraph trumpeting a leaked internal memo from a former independent adviser strongly criticising, amongst other things, the opening sequence of a documentary on Donald Trump’s chance to win a second presidential term. Using the memo a Telegraph apparatchik asks, rhetorically of course, in a YouTube video, “If members of its own independent editorial committee have no faith in the BBC you have to ask, should we?”

The leaked memo criticises other aspects of BBC news coverage, but as we can see from the news coverage the overwhelming emphasis is on the Trump documentary – and on the basis of that fundamental questions are being asked about the future of, and indeed justification for, the BBC.

So, please bear with me, let’s do some forensic analysis on this clip and its significance.

The edit was in a montage at the start of the documentary spliced together two accurate clips in his speech to the crowd on January 6 before they marched on and stormed the Capital in a bid to overturn the election result.

In one clip he told them to march on Congress, saying, ‘We’re going to walk down to the Capitol... and I’ll be there with you.’ There was a cutaway to the crowd, and a second clip spliced on where he said, ‘And we fight. We fight like hell.’

Both quotes were accurate, taken directly from his speech to the crowd, but separated by 54 minutes, and when he said the first clip he added, ‘We’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.’

And that’s it. This was a montage setting up the main hour-long documentary called Trump: A Second Chance? Obviously such an appalling piece of bias was so obvious, so flagrant, so disgraceful that it immediately stoked broad-based outrage across the whole political spectrum and much handwringing

Oh wait.

The documentary was broadcast a week before the US presidential election in November last year – a year ago. Reaction at the time?

Zero.

This is not irrelevant. If, as is claimed by the independent adviser, this was so distorting and misleading that it ‘materially mislead viewers’ why did no-one outside this adviser raise a hue and cry. Where were the complaints from the audience and other media outlets?

Let me suggest that perhaps the fact Trump DID tell people to march on the Capitol, and he DID tell them to ‘fight like hell’, was something well understood by the audience regardless of the gap between the remarks.

Now, let’s be clear, the splicing was wrong. Broadcasters like myself have all been there – the problem of taking a lot of material and turning it into a couple of snappy clips is fraught with peril. It’s easy to cut one corner too many, to lose patience as you run out of time and say that’ll do.

Trump’s speech that day was over two hours and 22,000+ words, so not easy, especially from a man who is verbally incontinent and speaks with little structural coherence, or often even discernible sense. Still it was slipshod and shouldn’t have happened. It would have been easy to highlight the fact there was a gap between the two remarks.

But – there’s more.

The Telegraph and fellow critics, as well as the adviser have made a huge amount of, indeed largely built their case on, the 54 minute gap between his call to march on the Capitol and the call to ‘fight like hell.’

But that’s not the only reference to walking to the Capital. Here’s the unedited transcript from the ending of Trump’s speech to the crowd. (My highlighting)

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.

Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavours have not yet begun. My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country. And I say this despite all that’s happened. The best is yet to come.

So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give…the Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote…but we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help. We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

I want to thank you all. God bless you and God Bless America. Thank you all for being here. This is incredible. Thank you very much. Thank you.

So, in reality Trump not only told the crowd to ‘fight like hell’ but SECONDS later, not 54 minutes later, also told them to ‘walk down Pennsylvania Avenue’ to the Capitol, not once but twice.

Sure Panorama should not have spliced the original clips together, but the Telegraph have built their massive edifice of accusation, something that supposedly ‘materially mislead viewers’, on a 54 minute gap between Trump telling them to walk and telling them to fight. This gap supposedly totally altered the context and therefore the meaning of Trump’s remark

But as the extract above shows – there wasn’t a gap. If the sloppy eejit who spliced the original widely-spaced clips together had instead edited the concluding remarks together, which were only seconds apart, and said exactly the same thing, then the core of the Telegraph’s accusation collapses.

And all this ignores some other fairly glaring issues about Trump’s incitement to his supporters, which throw some light on the implication that Trump’s speech was somehow not part of the problem on that day.

Like the day before the march when he tweeted, “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild.”

The responses from his supporters included tweets like: ‘Is the 6^th D-Day is that why Trump wants everyone there?’ ‘Trump just told us all to come armed. Fucking A, this is happening.’ It ‘will be wild’ means we need volunteers for the firing squad.’

That’s the context for his incendiary speech, when he told them to fight or lose the country, when he told them to go to the Capitol. And when they did, his inaction for hours made it worse. Then, when it was all over Trump was, after all massively criticised, even by Republicans, as well as being impeached. What came out in that inquiry shows he was far from critical of the rioters as it was happening, and his pardoning of them all since is the final proof that he had a role in making what happened on January 6 happen.

Oh and by the way, no-one is criticising the main body of the actual Panorama documentary itself, which is unavailable now, but by all accounts was fair.

So all this mountain of shit being piled on the BBC is based on a few seconds in a long forgotten if decent programme and some careless, poor editing which didn’t actually lead to something that ‘materially misled viewers.’ I mean, does anyone sentient actually believe Trump did nothing wrong on January 6, that he was just an innocent lamb wanting a nice peaceful march?

There’s a current phrase, especially in the US, about something being a ‘nothingburger’ – a fuss about nothing. Given the sloppy edit this isn’t quite a nothingburger, but not far off, so in good British culinary terms I’d describe it as an overcooked, cheap sausage, filled with gristle and breadcrumbs and precious little meat.

So how have we got here?

Well, firstly, the BBC is far from perfect, and I’ll come back to that. More to the point though, the enemies of the BBC are circling and looking for any excuse, and think they have an opportunity. Let’s look at some of the accusers.

The Daily Telegraph hates the BBC with a passion. This is not just another news scoop for them but part of their campaign to kill it. The Daily Mail is in the same category. They’re entitled to their views, but neither is in any sort of position to pronounce on impartiality and fairness when their story choices and opinion pages are so thoroughly compromised in support of a right-wing agenda – including attacking the BBC.

Laughably Boris Johnson has entered the fray to attack the BBC. Early in his career he was sacked by The Times for making up quotes, and later also sacked by the then Tory Party leader, Michael Howard, for lying about an affair. As Daily Telegraph journalist based in Brussels he was a byword for grossly exaggerated stories attacking the EU. His political career was ultimately derailed by a growing successions of scandal involving his consistent problems with being honest and straightforward. It’s hard to think of someone more lacking in credibility to talk about integrity and impartiality.

Except of course for Donald Trump, whose encounters with truth are largely accidental as he weaves the web of delusion Trumperbole that is Trumpworld, where he’s right about everything, always winning, solves wars with a wave of his hand, and anyone who doesn’t agree with him is a radical left lunatic or something similar.

I’m not saying being slagged off by Trump is a badge of honour or should be actively sought, but it just inevitably goes with the territory for any media that does its job properly. Unless you are the Prime Minister there are some people whose good opinion is really not worth having. The same applies to his various spokespeople/propagandists who are presiding over an administration that is steadily pushing out any but the most slavish and craven supporters of Trump.

What are the wider implications of the current crisis? Why does it matter?

Having started on forensically analysing a video clip we now need to widen the aperture, realising the BBC’s opponents are using a pretty minor issue for wider purposes which not only would undermine the BBC but affect a wider media landscape at a time of turmoil and change.

The BBC itself is facing a fundamental review and renewal of its charter at the end of 2027, and current debates will help create a climate and context for how that turns out. Those who want to in effect kill the BBC are trying to create a public and political narrative to bring that about.

This makes it all the more important for the BBC to engage in that debate, to seek to shape that narrative, and bluntly it’s not been very good at it.

Sadly, this is not new – as a communication organisation it’s remarkably bad at communicating about itself. The fact that this issue itself rumbled on and built up for several days without the BBC getting engaged speaks for itself. As a former NATO spokesman I regard BBC crisis communications as frankly rubbish.

It needs to improve, and fast, because the media landscape raises genuine issues about things like the license fee. In the era of social media, streaming, Netflix & Co, the funding model is a legitimate issue for discussion.

The future of news, not just BBC news, is also on the line. The business model for mainstream news organisations is broken. Serious local news is dying fast. People have got used to getting their news for free, while also moving over to TikTok and the like for influencer-driven news, often living within the algorithmic models that just tell you what you want to hear.

Alongside this we are seeing a consolidation and concentration of ownership, notably in the US, which is seeing billionaires taking more and more control of major media and communication groups. Many of them have aligned themselves to Trump. In this country ITV is in talks with Sky. Where this all leads is up in the air, but anyone who believes that we should trust billionaires to deliver fair and impartial news is delusional.

So, for me the survival of a publicly-funded broadcaster to deliver a broad range of fair and impartial news is fundamental.

I have been a journalist and then spokesperson for coming up to five decades. When I look out at the media landscape it scares me.

Frankly, I am far from an uncritical admirer of the BBC for which I worked for two decades. I do think there’s some substance to criticisms about coverage of Gaza and so on. But when I look at the alternatives I don’t see them. For the Daily Telegraph I would quote the bible, saying, “Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

For the BBC, I would say, you’ve had enough warnings, for God’s sake sort out your crisis communications as part of a proper narrative for the future. For the rest of us? The alternative to the BBC is far worse, so to quote Trump in mildly altered form, ‘We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country media you can trust anymore.’