• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 6 hours ago

Few would argue that doctoring the video of a speech in the way the BBC doctored President Trump’s speech represented an effort to distort the truth and mislead.

In this instance, it was a way for the editors of the BBC documentary series “Panorama” to drive home their opinion that Trump was responsible for inciting the Capitol Hill riots with words he chose deliberately for the outdoor speech he delivered in Washington on January 6, 2021.

It is almost unbelievable that someone working in a news environment that was once one of the most respected and trusted in the world would feel that it was OK to betray that trust by manipulating a news event in favor of an opinion they held, and one they likely assumed was shared by everyone they worked with.

Common sense and journalistic standards and practices gave way to zealotry, but it did not have to be that way. 

The BBC went way too far on this one. To make their point, or one close to it, they could have just used part of the speech without blatantly stitching together two passages that were 54 minutes apart. The whole thing was just so dumb.

Here is the “quote” seen on the “Panorama” show on October 28, 2024, that the BBC came up with after combining two passages from the speech that were 54 minutes apart: 

“We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there 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,” their video quotes Trump as saying.

They took “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you” from the first passage, but cut the words that came just after that -- “and we’re gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women [meaning the Republicans].”

In that same passage, Trump even said: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

But the BBC skipped all of that. Instead, they took the rest of the quote they aired on the show -- “… and we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore” -- from a second passage from almost an hour later. (The speech was approximately 70 minutes long.)

This portion followed a Trump complaint in the speech that the election Joe Biden won the previous November was fixed.

But here is the upshot: If the BBC had simply used the second passage as a whole or in part, they would have been able to make their point or something close to it that Trump’s words incited the rioters, or at the very least encouraged them.* 

The word “fight” does appear in the passage three times, including two instances that say “fight like hell.” 

The piece could have even aired the first passage, and then mentioned that it came earlier in the speech. 

Then they could have aired the second passage to make the point that Trump had taken a harder line 54 minutes later. 

That way, the piece would have been seen as balanced and no scandal would have materialized.

Why didn’t the producers of “Panorama” do it that way? Why on earth did they go so far as to make a clumsy mashup of the two passages that was discoverable? 

Now, the BBC is in a very big mess -- one that is being portrayed by some as the worst in its history. 

It could have all been avoided if editors and producers at the BBC had simply used their heads. Are there really no rules anymore?

*Then-President Trump was impeached by the Senate on January 13, 2021, seven days after the speech, on charges of inciting the riots. A month later, on February 13, 2021, the Senate acquitted the then-ex-President on all charges.