BBC ‘Doctored’ Trump Jan. 6 Speech

The BBC “doctored” a Donald Trump speech by making him appear to encourage the Capitol Hill riot, according to an internal whistleblowing memo seen by The Telegraph.

A Panorama programme, broadcast a week before the US election, “completely misled” viewers by showing the president telling supporters he was going to walk to the Capitol with them to “fight like hell”, when in fact he said he would walk with them “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”.

The “mangled” footage was highlighted in a 19-page dossier on BBC bias, which was compiled by a recent member of the corporation’s standards committee and is now circulating in government departments.

The dossier said the programme made the US president “‘say’ things [he] never actually said” by splicing together footage from the start of his speech with something he said nearly an hour later.

It claimed senior executives and the BBC’s chairman had ignored and dismissed a string of serious complaints raised by the corporation’s own standards watchdog.

Donald Trump Jr, the president’s eldest son, accused the BBC of dishonesty and “fake news”.

He reposted The Telegraph’s story on X, writing: “The FAKE NEWS ‘reporters’ in the UK are just as dishonest and full of s--- as the ones here in America!!!!”

The document raises serious questions about the culture at the BBC, how it affects impartiality and how managers including Tim Davie, the director-general, are accused of turning a blind eye to evidence of bias.

The Conservatives have demanded an immediate investigation into how the Panorama documentary was allowed to be broadcast.

Nigel Huddleston, the shadow culture secretary, said: “These are extremely concerning revelations that could seriously undermine the brand and reputation of the BBC.

“The BBC licence fee is justified on the basis of impartiality and trust.

“There can be no justification for this kind of deliberate manipulation and the spreading of misinformation. “This is not the first time that evidence of bias at the BBC has emerged, but it is one of the most stark and alarming examples to date.

“Licence-fee payers deserve an immediate explanation and apology from the BBC and a thorough investigation into this scandal must take place.”

The most damaging disclosures involve a one-hour Panorama special called Trump: A Second Chance? that was broadcast in October last year.

As well as altering Trump’s words, the documentary also showed flag-waving men marching on the Capitol in Washington DC on Jan 6 2021 after the president spoke, which “created the impression Trump’s supporters had taken up his ‘call to arms’”. In fact the footage, was shot before Trump had even started speaking.

The report said Panorama’s “distortion of the day’s events” was so egregious that viewers would ask: “Why should the BBC be trusted, and where will this all end?”

When the issue was raised with managers, they “refused to accept there had been a breach of standards”. The report’s author then warned Samir Shah, the BBC chairman, of the “very, very dangerous precedent” set by Panorama but received no reply.

The internal whistleblower sent a copy of the 19-page letter to every member of the BBC Board last month.

It was accompanied by foreboding music in the background and followed immediately by footage of people marching on the Capitol, with nothing to explain or signal to viewers that the footage had been edited or was out of sequence.

The BBC had spliced together three separate parts of Mr Trump’s speech into what appeared to be one fluent sentence.

In fact, what Mr Trump said was: “We’re gonna walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re gonna walk down, we’re gonna walk down any one you want but I think right here, we’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and we’re gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong… I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Some 54 minutes later, when Mr Trump was talking about elections being “corrupt”, he said of voters on election day: “Most people would stand there at 9 o’clock in the evening and say I wanna thank you very much, and they go off to some other life, but I said something’s wrong here, something’s really wrong, can’t have happened, and we fight.

“We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country any more.”