BBC director general Tim Davie and news division CEO Deborah Turness resigned from the London-based news network Sunday night, following the release of an internal dossier alleging the company had doctored a speech then-President Donald Trump gave on Jan. 6, 2021, to make it appear as though he incited violence at the Capitol.
Michael Prescott, a longtime British journalist who worked as an independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee board until June 2025, sent a letter criticizing the BBC’s reporting on U.S. elections, racial diversity, biological sex/gender and the Israel-Hamas war.
In the letter’s preface, Prescott said, “Inaction by the BBC Executive when issues come to light” is what motivated him to prepare the note.
“On no other occasion in my professional life have I witnessed what I did at the BBC with regard to how management dealt with (or failed to deal with) serious recurrent problems,” he said, as obtained by The Telegraph.
The doctored section of Trump’s speech
In the BBC’s documentary titled, “Trump: A Second Chance?”, the news organization spliced two sections of Trump’s speech given in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, to make it appear as though he incited riots at the Capitol.
The documentary was released a week before the U.S. presidential election, last November.
According to the documentary, Trump allegedly said, “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you and we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
However, the first two clauses, “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you,” came 15 minutes into the speech, and the rest came 54 minutes later.
Trump’s actual quote was, “We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
The documentary also shows a clip of the Proud Boys marching to the Capitol following the president’s remarks, but the letter says the segment was filmed before Trump spoke.
In a letter released by The New York Times, BBC Chair Samir Shah said, “The purpose of editing the clip was to convey the message of the speech made by President Trump, so that Panorama’s audience could better understand how it had been received by President Trump’s supporters and what was happening on the ground at that time.”
However, they added, “We accept that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action. The BBC would like to apologize for that error of judgment.”
Trump threatens $1 billion lawsuit against BBC
Trump has now threatened to sue the BBC over the spliced clip for $1 billion. His letter demanded an apology, appropriate compensation and a full retraction of the documentary.
If those demands are not met, “President Trump will be left with no alternative but to enforce his legal and equitable rights, all of which are expressly reserved and are not waived, including by filing legal action for no less than $1,000,000,000 (One Billion Dollars) in damages,” the letter said, according to the BBC.
The British news organization has until Friday, Nov. 14, to comply.
As of Monday, “Trump: A Second Chance?” has been removed from the BBC’s online player.
BBC’s Arabic reporting has ‘systemic’ bias, Prescott says
Prescott compared the BBC’s English coverage of the Israel-Hamas war with its Arabic coverage.
“It is hard to conclude anything other than that BBC Arabic’s story treatment was designed to minimize Israeli suffering and paint Israel as the aggressor,” Prescott wrote.
For example, the BBC’s main site published 19 stories about the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and BBC Arabic has published none.
There were also no articles that criticized Hamas on the BBC Arabic site, while there were four on the English site, Prescott said.
The letter stated, Arabic reporting consistently used Gaza death toll statistics from Hamas sources, broadcasted inaccurate stories about starvation in Gaza, repeated false claims about an International Court of Justice ruling on “plausible genocide” and suggested Israel was responsible for “mass graves.”
As Prescott concluded his letter, he wrote, “There are clearly worrying systemic issues with the BBC’s coverage in the areas set out above. From what I witnessed, I fear the problems could be even more widespread than this summary might suggest.”
Irish author Brendan O’Neill commented on the BBC scandal in The Spectator, Monday.
“This scandal exposes a great truth of our time — that the elites are often more susceptible to fallacy and hysteria than the rest of us are."
O’Neill added, “The BBC treated the public it is meant to serve as irritants, people who’ve simply failed to get with the programme of ‘trans joy’ and Israel-hate. If it had listened to them, maybe it wouldn’t be sinking so fast.”