British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is nowadays moving from one scandal to another. Whether it is misleading documentaries about Gaza or editing Donald Trump’s speech to mislead viewers that he incited the crowd to commit violence after his loss to Joe Biden in the US Presidential elections. Now, due to the Trump speech scandal, BBC Director General Tim Davie and BBC’s news CEP Deborah Turness have been forced to resign.
BBC, which claims to be a beacon of neutrality, has been found to be anything but that, and the latest scandal is another big jolt to the reputation of once a reliable news network.
According to the British paper The Telegraph, a whistleblower revealed that the BBC’s flagship investigative program Panorama spliced together parts of Trump’s speech to make it appear as though he encouraged the rioters, telling supporters he would walk with them to “fight like hell”.
Announcing his resignation, Director General Tim Davie said, “Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable. While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision. Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as director general I have to take ultimate responsibility.”
While the news CEO Turness said, “In public life leaders need to be fully accountable, and that is why I am stepping down. While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.”
Notably, none of them denied that the footage was edited by BBC to suit its bias, and claimed that BBC is unbiased. How unbiased are they when they frequently try to mislead people as per their politicial inclinations is anyone’s guess.
To go back to the edited speech, Donald Trump said on January 6, 2021, “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 edit he was saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
One would expect BBC to introspect a little after such a huge scandal involving the most influential person in the world, the US President, but an organisation which didn’t introspect after Jimmy Saville scandal, is unkiley to do it now. For now, British people keep funding this news network which is openly feeding them lies.
