The BBC Cut That Cut Deep

Trump raged, Putin scowled, Netanyahu sneered. The BBC’s edit exposed their theatre. Davie and Turness fell, not for falsehood, but for showing truth unvarnished.

It did not begin with fire and fury but with a quiet tremor in the news cycle. Tim Davie and Deborah Turness had resigned from the BBC after a Panorama documentary dared to cut through Donald Trump’s January 6 speech. In the programme, the edit gave the impression that Trump told his supporters he would march with them to the Capitol to “fight like hell”. A leaked nineteen page memo soon followed, drafted by Michael Prescott, once an adviser on editorial standards. It accused the BBC of crossing the invisible line of impartiality. Then came the noise.

Trump, never one to resist spectacle, threatened to sue the BBC for one billion dollars. He demanded an apology, a retraction, and compensation for what he called false and defamatory claims. The Russian embassy declared that BBC journalists “manipulate facts and censor information”. The Israeli embassy joined in, accusing the broadcaster of “consistent failures” of integrity. A strange coalition of outrage had formed. When Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump all condemn the same newsroom, you can be sure it has hit the nerve of truth.

I was not in the BBC’s offices when it happened. I did not need to be. You could see the storm from anywhere. Every headline carried a faint note of glee, as if watching a titan stumble offered proof that no institution is above the mob. Yet the uproar revealed something else. Power always hates the moment its reflection sharpens. The BBC, for all its bureaucracy and caution, had dared to adjust the focus.

The complaint about editing is not really about editing. It is about control. Trump’s January 6 speech was theatre. His claim that he was misunderstood is itself an act. When he said his supporters must “fight like hell”, the meaning was not hidden in metaphor. It was carved into the air. The BBC’s task was to show the shape of that threat. Journalism that refuses to interpret becomes stenography, and stenography is the language of propaganda.

Yes, the BBC made mistakes. It always does. But to accuse it of corruption because it tried to illuminate intent is absurd. Deborah Turness called her resignation “the privilege of my career” and insisted that BBC News is not institutionally biased. She is right to defend her journalists. Imperfect though they are, they still try to speak plainly in a time when truth is traded like currency.

Orwell once wrote that “freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”. When a public broadcaster edits a demagogue’s speech to show that two plus two still equals four, it is performing its duty. Those who howl about bias do not fear lies. They fear arithmetic.

Trump’s letter of outrage, sent to the wrong address, would be comic if it were not symptomatic. A man who built his political identity on distortion now cries defamation when held to his own words. The Russian embassy lectures on journalistic ethics while jailing reporters. The Israeli government accuses the BBC of inaccuracy while bombing media offices in Gaza. This is the moral chorus of the age: the guilty denouncing the imperfect for daring to describe them.

The BBC’s error was not editing too boldly. Its error was imagining that truth could be made palatable to power. You cannot expose corruption and expect gratitude. The resignation of its leaders is less an act of contrition than a symbol of how fragile editorial courage has become. We live in an era when objectivity has been hijacked by those who despise facts.

I defend the cut. It was messy, yes, but necessary. The role of the journalist is not to soothe the powerful. It is to make their words mean what they mean. If the BBC erred, it was in not going far enough. Trump’s speech was not misunderstood. It was understood all too well.

So when the powerful line up to denounce a broadcaster, I take it as a sign of health. If both dictators and demagogues accuse you of bias, you are probably doing your job. Journalism is not supposed to please. It is supposed to provoke understanding, and sometimes fury.

In the end, what matters is not whether the BBC survives this scandal but whether it remembers what it exists for. A free press that never offends the powerful has already ceased to be free. The BBC was right to cut. It was right to clarify. It was right to make the public look again. Because truth, when edited correctly, is still truth. And in an age of deliberate confusion, that remains the most dangerous act of all.

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