The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is looking a lot more like the Biased Broadcasting Corporation after a bombshell internal whistleblower memo was made public.
Last week, The Telegraph reported on the complaint from a former advisor to the BBC’s Standards Committee, Michael Prescott, addressed to members of the BBC board, in which he blasted the network over a range of issues, including its documentary titled Trump: A Second Chance that aired a week before the 2024 election.
Prescott accused the project of “taking a distinctly anti-Trump stance” that he found to be “neither balanced nor impartial.” He pointed to a particularly egregious edit of the president’s speech to supporters on January 6, 2021, as one such example, and Trump is now threatening to sue the British outlet over the incident.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Stu Burguiere, host of Stu Does America, to discuss the misleading edit and how the BBC is trying to handle the fallout.
The Edit
Chief among Prescott’s complaints was a clip of the president’s remarks at the Capitol on January 6 because of the blatant disregard for journalistic ethics it displayed. Here is what Trump appeared to say in the documentary that was aired by the BBC:
“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
And here is what he actually said that day:
“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. 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.”
So, they took “we’re going to walk down to the Capitol” and “I’ll be there with you” and butted it to words about “fighting like hell or you won’t have a country anymore” – words Trump actually said some 54 minutes later in the speech.
Omitted entirely? The president’s words urging people to march “peacefully and patriotically to make your voices heard.” Prescott wrote that “this created the impression that Trump said something he did not and, in doing so, materially misled viewers.”
Megyn called the edit “grossly unethical” and “a cardinal sin of journalism” by any measure. “You go 24 pages later [in the transcript] to pull the most incendiary thing he said and prop it up against the beginning to make it look like he called for violence, and you are 100 percent going to get sued for defamation,” she said. “And that’s what is about to happen to the BBC.”
The Fallout
On Sunday, the head of the BBC, Tim Davie, and the head of news, Deborah Turness, resigned in the wake of the controversy. The following day, President Trump made the BBC the latest target in his crusade against media bias.
According to a letter obtained by The New York Times, he demanded a full retraction, apology, and payment to compensate for harm caused by the grossly misleading edit. Trump reportedly set a Friday deadline and threatened a $1 billion defamation lawsuit filed in Florida if the BBC does not comply.
On Monday, BBC Chairman Samir Shah penned his own letter to the governing body overseeing the BBC that largely defended against the accusations of bias, though he did acknowledge the source of the outrage. “I want to make clear that we have taken Mr. Prescott’s concerns seriously, and considered the points he made carefully,” Shah wrote.
Shah said the publication of Prescott’s memo has led to over 500 complaints and prompted “further reflection” by the BBC. “The conclusion of that deliberation is that we accept that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action,” he wrote. “The BBC would like to apologise for that error of judgement.”
The organization is reportedly “considering how to respond” to Trump’s demands, but Megyn believes the outlet is “100 percent going to be writing a big check” to the president and the only question is how big the number is going to be.
Media Malpractice
The BBC is publicly funded and holds a special status in the UK. The New York Times reported it is funded primarily from an annual license fee paid by households that watch TV and supplemented by commercial revenue. It has a mandate to “act in the public interest, providing impartial, high-quality content that informs, educates, and entertains.”
And yet the organization has been caught up in more than its fair share of controversies over the years. Burguiere believes that is because that is reflective of a larger shift in corporate media as a whole. “There was always people out there who were left-wing and… people that made left-leaning decisions… and promoted claims and phrased them and framed them in ways that I didn’t like,” he explained. “I think with Donald Trump – you can call it Trump Derangement Syndrome if you want – but I think more central to that is there is this idea on the left… those old rules of journalism cannot be respected anymore because this is… too serious.”
He believes that was apparent during the coverage (or lack thereof) of the Hunter Biden laptop. “I think normally, in the past… they would say that it was misleading or maybe fake, and that was it,” Burguiere noted. “[In this case,] they just didn’t tell anybody about it at all. They acted as if it didn’t even exist. They were so focused and became the activists inside of them, instead of left-wing people doing journalism with some sort of loose respect for those rules. That has gone out the window.”
While Burguiere admitted that he has “some sensitivities” to the president of the United States going after media corporations, he said Trump “has been able to highlight these examples that are really egregious and hold these places accountable” in a way that might actually lead to change.
“You can’t lie to the American people constantly and be protected… They have to be held responsible at some level,” Burguiere said. “Trump is at least putting the fear into them on this stuff. If you were a left-wing media executive and one of these reports was about to air, you’d say, ‘Let’s make sure this is buttoned up. Why are we editing two clips that are 54 minutes apart? Just tell the truth. If you think Donald Trump did a lot of things around January 6 that were bad, just make that case with the facts.'”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Burguiere by tuning in to episode 1,191 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.