The head of the BBC, Tim Davie, and the head of BBC News, Deborah Turness, have been forced to resign after misrepresenting Donald Trump. This will be interesting news to everyone who remembers 2015-2019 when the BBC misrepresented then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and we did not see a single resignation. In fact, we saw the opposite. We saw legal action against those who pointed it out.
The resignations of Davie and Turness come after the BBC spliced together a Donald Trump speech in a Panorama episode entitled: Trump: A Second Chance?
Trump had said the words: “We fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” The implication was that these words were inciting violence at the US Capitol, but it turns out Trump was alleging US electoral corruption.
Honestly, the edit wasn’t even that bad because the words come from a lengthy speech in which Trump spoke about the US Capitol and had used similar language throughout. Trump’s words could easily have been interpreted as inciting a riot.
As president, Trump should carefully choose his words to leave no room for ambiguity. It was his job to defuse tensions and he clearly did the opposite. His speech was undeniably inflammatory, regardless of whether he intended to incite violence.
Trump supporters would have you believe the BBC edit was the most outrageous piece of misinformation ever, and because it upset the far right, resignations had to happen.
If a similar error misrepresented a left-wing politician like say, Jeremy Corbyn, those resignations would never have happened. How do we know this? Because Corbyn was repeatedly misrepresented when he was Labour leader, and not only did the BBC gaslight us, but lawyers got involved…
Who can remember when the BBC depicted Corbyn as a Russian stooge by photoshopping him against a reddened Kremlin backdrop?
Or when Panorama appeared to misrepresent Corbyn’s Labour with unsubstantiated or inaccurate allegations?
John Ware, the maker of the documentary Is Labout Antisemitic? hired Mark Lewis, a former director of UK Lawyers for Israel to sue Jeremy Corbyn and others for defamation after they criticised his show. He insisted the documentary was a “fair and balanced investigation” and not a “hatchet job” as critics had suggested.
You would think Ware’s documentary had been vindicated, however, the BBC issued a clarification on the editing of an interview, accepting it “could have given viewers a misleading impression”. The words in bold are the words Panorama omitted:
A Labour member called Izzy Lenga complained of antisemitism that came mostly from the far right, but Panorama made it look like she was accusing party members of saying those words during Labour meetings. The most charitable interpretation is that this was a clumsy error that unintentionally misled the public. For legal reasons, I shall let you decide!
Al Jazeera made a documentary series entitled The Labour Files, detailing how the BBC and Starmer’s faction of the Labour Party had misled the public over Labour antisemitism. This was corroberated by the Forde Report that was commissioned, and later buried, by Keir Starmer. Martin Forde KC spoke to Al Jazeera to set the record straight, yet the mainstream media acts like The Labour Files and The Forde Report don’t exist.
It’s worth pointing out that no legal action was taken against Al Jazeera for The Labour Files. This is noteworthy because John Ware took legal action against Al Jazeera for a separate matter. Presumably, he felt he did not have a strong enough case in this instance, or perhaps he could not be bothered with yet another court case.
In my opinion, the BBC failed to provide supportive evidence for key claims in the Panorama documentary. It did not adequately show the other side of the argument, yet anyone who questioned its reporting was called an “antisemite”.
John Ware issued a 10,000 word rebuttal in the Jewish Chronicle to criticisms from Novara Media, accusing them of “cherry picking”. However, he did not take legal action against Novara Media as he had done with others.
It was not just the Panorama documentary that proved controversial during the Corbyn years. The one and only Laura Kuenssberg was caught mispresenting Corbyn’s views on shoot-to-kill, breaching impartiality rules.
In a BBC report, Kuenssberg substantially paraphrased a question she had asked Corbyn about whether he would order police to shoot to kill. She suggested she had asked Corbyn about a hostage scenario that had not been put to him. Corbyn supported shoot-to-kill in situations where there was an immediate threat to human life, but Kuenssberg implied he did not. This was an especially weird gotcha, given the scandal of the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting.
Kuenssberg did not resign for misleading viewers, nor did the head of the BBC. Kuenssberg was later rewarded with her own Sunday morning TV show.
During Corbyn’s time in charge of Labour, the BBC misrepresented Corbyn multiple times, and gaslit us until it was forced to half-heartedly concede wrongdoing.
Research shows Corbyn’s critics were given twice as much airtime on the BBC as his supporters. The BBC regularly used perjoratives such as “far left”, “hardcore”, and “hostile” to describe supporters of Corbyn’s Labour, but it did not do the equivalent for supporters of Johnson’s Conservatives.
Every time it was caught out, the BBC insisted it had made innocent errors, but those errors were always against Corbyn and Labour.
For further evidence of BBC double standards, look no further than Raffi Berg, the Middle East editor who is suing Owen Jones and Dropsite News for their allegations against him. Aside from anything else, we should be allowed to harshly criticise our state broadcaster without fear of being sued. Surely, that is in the public interest.
Jones wrote an article for DropSite alleging that Raffi Berg was editing the BBC’s Gaza coverage in favour of Israel. He corroberated his detailed witness testimony with other evidence, but Berg furiously rejects the accusations. Berg contacted Mark Lewis from UK Lawyers for Israel - the same guy who represented John Ware - but I understand he has now changed lawyers, possibly to avoid accusations of bias.
For obvious legal reasons, I can’t say that Raffi Berg is biased towards Israel, but you can watch this video and make up your mind:
Berg just happens to have a framed letter from Netanyahu and a framed picture of himself and Israeli ambassador Mark Regev on his wall. Coincidentally, Netanyahu has a copy of Berg’s book Red Sea Spies on his book shelf - a fact Berg likes to brag about. Red Sea Spies is a book that apparently praises Mossad, although I haven’t read it and don’t intend to.
The BBC loves to say it is not enough for the organisation to be impartial, it must be seen to be impartial. This is the justifcation it used to pull the documentaries Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone and Gaza: Doctors Under Attack. It is happy to use such a justifcation to avoid accusations of bias against Israel, but if you accuse the BBC of bias in favour of Israel, you might get sued.
Surely, the BBC should be taking the accusations against Raffi Berg seriously, regardless of whether they ultimately uphold them. Ironically, one of the accusations against the left was that we failed to take accusations of Labour antisemitism seriously. It seems only one side needs to take accusations seriously and it is the side that is so often falsely accused.
If founded, the allegations against Berg are far more serious than the clumsy Trump edit that forced Davie and Turness to resign, yet Berg isn’t forced to resign. He gets to sue his accusers.
People are saying the forced resignations of Davie and Turness amount to a coup, a coup carried out by people even further right than Davie. Note that this is happening at a time when US giant Comcast is attempting to purchase ITV for £1.6 billion (it already owns Sky). It would appear the US and Israel are hijacking British television at the same time they are hijacking social media and we should all be deeply concerned.
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Thank you Ricky, right on the nose as usual!
Apologising and resigning for the wrong lies. Classic.