London. – BBC ChairmanSameer Shah He apologized on Monday for what he called an “error in judgment”. After the broadcast of documentaries including Misleading editing of US President Donald Trump’s speech.
The episode sparked a wave of criticism. caused Resignation of two senior executives It also led to legal threats against public broadcasting by President Trump.caused a serious crisis for British companies, which were already under intense scrutiny for reporting on sensitive topics such as the Gaza war and gender identity issues.
Shah admitted before a parliamentary committee that President Trump’s speech aired on the show was edited. panoramaone week before the 2024 US presidential election. “False” impression He said the rally “should have been handled more carefully.”
In a letter to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the President acknowledged: The altered content “could be interpreted as a direct call to violence”,something It did not match the president’s actual words.
“The BBC’s commitment to impartiality is absolute,” Mr Shah wrote, adding that the broadcaster was working to “restore public trust and ensure that our journalism meets the highest editorial standards”.
He explained that the issue had been considered internally earlier this year, but no formal action had been taken until now. In his letter, Shah pledged to “intensify” monitoring of the organization’s compliance with editorial standards.
“The BBC has learned from this incident,” he said. “Our duty is to ensure that mistakes like this never happen again.”
The BBC confirmed that it had received the following information: Legal letter from US president threatening legal action against the chains “Defamation and intentional manipulation” of his speech. According to British media, Trump’s legal team accused the channel of having “fabricated visual evidence” that damaged its international reputation.
This is not the first time a president has gone to court against a news organization. The president has already sued several American news organizations during his second term. washington post However, some of these cases were dismissed by the courts.
he controversial montage of panorama It pieced together two different fragments of Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, the day of the attack on the Washington Capitol. In the final version, The speech apparently included a direct exhortation to “fight like the devil” And marching to Congress, the president at the time actually said, “We will walk to the Capitol to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen.”. The expression “fight like the devil” corresponds to another passage in the speech and has nothing to do with its context.
The internal report that found the errors was written by Michael Prescott, a former independent adviser to the BBC Editorial Standards Board. Prescott said in a written statement that he alerted the head of the standards department, who denied at the time that there had been any violations of standards.
This scandal happened on Sunday BBC director-general Tim Davie and executive director of news Deborah Turness have resigned.. Mr Davie said in an internal message that “the BBC is working well” but acknowledged that “mistakes were made” and that he had to take responsibility for them.
Mr. Turness rejected accusations of institutional bias and defended the channel. “BBC News is not biased. That’s why we remain the world’s most trusted news provider,” he told reporters outside the group’s London headquarters.
The incident sparked a wave of political criticism. Parliamentary committee chairwoman Caroline Dinenage asked for an explanation and thought: “The BBC must lead by example against the rise in misinformation.”
An official government spokesperson expressed the government’s support for a “strong, independent BBC” that plays a “vital role in an age of misinformation”, but stressed that the broadcaster must “maintain high quality and quickly correct mistakes”.
In the opposition, conservative Kemi Badenoch said: “A Catalog of Serious Failures” Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right Reform UK Party, called for this. “Comprehensive and fundamental reform” of public organizations. Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey called on Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer to protect the BBC from attacks by Mr Trump and his allies, writing on the X Network: “It’s easy to see why Mr Trump would want to destroy the world’s biggest news source. We cannot allow him to do this.”
Trump himself celebrated his resignation on the social network Truth Social, attacking the BBC’s “corrupt and immoral journalists” in the same way he usually attacks traditional media.
controversy over panorama will be added to the expected set of questions lack of neutrality In reporting on international issues. Britain’s media regulator had already reprimanded the network in October for “breaching broadcasting standards” for reporting on Gaza, where the narrator was the son of a senior Hamas official.
The crisis comes at a delicate time for the audiovisual group, which is largely funded by an annual royalty fee of £174.50 (about $229), which works out to more than 22 million British households and equates to around £3.8 billion (about $5 billion) a year.
News agencies AFP and Reuters
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