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, Netanya…
