By Suzanne Downing 
Public trust in mainstream media has been eroding for years, and this weekend brought another blow. BBC Director-General Tim Davie resigned Sunday after revelations that the British state broadcaster aired doctored footage of former President Donald Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021 speech, falsely making it appear that he urged supporters to storm the US Capitol.
Davie, who led the publicly funded broadcaster for five years, said he was taking “ultimate responsibility” for “recent mistakes” in a statement released by the BBC. His resignation, along with that of BBC News chief Deborah Turness, followed a report in The Telegraph detailing a leaked internal memo that raised concerns over manipulated video editing in a Panorama documentary.
The memo, written by Michael Prescott, a former independent adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, revealed that the program Trump: A Second Chance? had spliced together two separate segments of Trump’s remarks to create the impression that he directly incited violence at the US Capitol.
In Trump’s actual Jan. 6 speech, he told supporters: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
However, in the Panorama version broadcast last year, the line was edited to appear as: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The “fight like hell” phrase was taken from a completely different portion of the speech – more than 50 minutes later – where Trump discussed election integrity. The edit, critics say, fundamentally changed the meaning of his remarks and suggested a direct call for violence.
Prescott, who left his advisory role in June, said he raised alarms about the issue months ago, warning that the edit violated the BBC’s standards of impartiality and accuracy. The documentary was produced for the BBC by independent production company October Films Ltd.
The broadcaster said it has launched an internal investigation into the matter and will issue a formal correction.
Davie’s resignation adds to a series of recent controversies over political bias at the BBC, raising renewed debate in Britain over whether the publicly funded network can maintain editorial neutrality in a polarized media environment. Many more media outlets have also mischaracterized Trump’s speech, in which he exhorted people to walk peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol
BBC has been garbage for years.
It is not surprising that they pulled a CBS and very likely have done so many times before.
The BBC and main (most if not all) mainstream media have been nothing more than propaganda and brainwashing sources for years and years. Imagine if all the heads of these organizations stepped aside every time they were caught fabricating the “news”
Pravda-on-the-Thames
.
Where are cman and Would-be-the-Frog to defend their beloved regime media?
Wokeness has all but destroyed the UK. Sat on their hands at the least, and otherwise facilitated an Islamic takeover! Mass media in general has so dropped the ball.
Couldn’t happen in America though, right?