00:00The Trump administration, or rather the president himself, according to lawyers, is thinking about a $1 billion lawsuit against the BBC, the latest broadcaster to be targeted by Trump.
00:15This after the resignation of the head of the channel and his head of news. It follows the word that a report had been doctored, a report that included, that edited together clips of Trump speaking on January 6, 2021, ahead of the storming of the Capitol.
00:36He has led the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, as director general since 2020. Tim Davey has now resigned, as has Deborah Ternis, the CEO of BBC News.
00:51Their departure comes amid mounting pressure, after an internal BBC report leaked to the Telegraph newspaper cited failings in BBC coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, trans issues, and the way a speech by the US President Donald Trump was edited.
01:07As soon as we started publishing our stories, Tim Davey's position had become untenable.
01:13The author of the paper's exclusive, Gordon Rayner, says Davey had known for about six months how footage of Trump, in a BBC Panorama documentary last year, had been edited.
01:23He kept quiet. I think he hoped this would all go away. It hasn't. I think it's also important to make the point that all of these things happened under his watch, and as a result of a culture that has been allowed to build under his leadership.
01:40Trump reacted to the resignations in London, saying,
01:44The top people in the BBC, including Tim Davey, the boss, are all quitting, fired because they were caught doctoring my very good perfect speech of January the 6th.
01:54Thank you to the Telegraph for exposing these corrupt journalists.
01:57The Telegraph published an extract of the documentary to show how Trump's speech, made just before the 6th of January insurrection in 2021, had been edited.
02:07We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.
02:16We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.
02:28This crisis for the BBC is the latest in a series, the one now sees the White House accusing it of being a propaganda machine.
02:37Well, for more, let's cross to London.
02:39Charlie Beckett is a professor of practice, Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics, and in a previous life, worked at the British Broadcasting Corporation.
02:53Thanks for being with us here on France 24.
02:56Hey there.
02:56These scalps that were had at the top of the BBC, is it because of what we heard in that report, a bad edit?
03:11Well, I think it's a bad edit that was symbolic of a wider problem, a problem of trust and confidence in the BBC.
03:19And I think the two resignations are actually somewhat different.
03:24Tim Davies has been there for a while.
03:26You could argue this was the final act that made him give up, if you like, through exhaustion.
03:34He's probably got the toughest job in public life in the UK.
03:38Deborah Ternes is slightly different.
03:40And she was taking much more direct responsibility for what went wrong with that panorama mistake, this misjudgment, and perhaps the way that that was dealt with.
03:51But to lose two of the top people responsible for the BBC and BBC News is quite extraordinary.
03:58Is the BBC less rigorous than it was when you worked there?
04:04Listen, old, old BBC hands always think things were better when they were there.
04:09I'm not sure that's entirely true.
04:11You have to remember that the BBC, in terms of their journalism and also its institution, is under much, much more pressure.
04:18It's got far fewer resources, which are spread much more thinly.
04:23So there is less oversight, perhaps there is less rigour in some of their management, but also the political context and the public context has changed.
04:34Everybody uses the BBC pretty much in the UK.
04:38Everyone pays for it, certainly.
04:40And therefore, everyone wants their BBC to reflect their worldview.
04:46And of course, it can't do that.
04:47It's impossible.
04:48But there is increasingly violent sort of cynicism and criticism of the BBC amongst the public as a whole, but particularly amongst politicians in the same way that Donald Trump attacked media organisations that weren't slavishly loyal to him.
05:05So we're getting a much more partisan approach from politicians in the UK and indeed from our newspapers, like the Daily Telegraph, which has always been very honestly right-wing, but is increasingly anti-BBC.
05:23Increasingly anti-BBC?
05:25I mean, we see both the Daily Telegraph and Britain's best-selling tabloid, the Daily Mail.
05:31I mean, they've always, it seems, been beeb-bashing.
05:34No, they've always been beeb-bashing partly because it's an easy target and it's something that we all hold dear.
05:40You've got to remember the BBC is not just about news.
05:43It's about documentaries and it's about drama.
05:46It's about local news and local culture.
05:49It's embedded in British lives.
05:51So it's always dangerous, actually, to attack the BBC without a good reason.
05:56But I don't think it has become more intense.
05:58And I think that's partly because of the commercial competition.
06:01People, news organisations are struggling to make money and the BBC, they see as a competitor, an unfair competitor, but also our politics.
06:12And I think this is, it's not just in the UK, it's not just the US.
06:15We see this generally across Europe.
06:17Our politics has become more aggressive.
06:20And where before journalists were able to say, well, look, we're just the messengers, we're just doing our job.
06:26I think journalists are now increasingly targeted by politicians unless they are loyal to those people in power.
06:35But let's not forget, the BBC made a mistake here.
06:38There are real problems within the BBC that it's struggling to manage.
06:43And this is why these two people have gone today.
06:45The big question is, is there anybody out there who can address some of these pressures?
06:53Is the BBC more undermined by this crisis or the one in 2003 when then Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair went after the public broadcaster over its coverage of the war in Iraq?
07:07No, I mean, the Iraq debacle and the Hutton inquiry that followed that was a very, very profound moment.
07:18And I think especially serious because it was around that conflict without wishing to reopen that incredibly complicated issue.
07:26I think it was, if you like, the start of this phase of a lack of or a loss of confidence on the part of the BBC, where in the past they were perhaps able to dismiss these kind of attacks.
07:40I think since then they've suffered to a degree a loss of nerve.
07:45In a way, I was quite pleased with the chairman today, Samir Shah, who's an old BBC veteran who's been away from the corporation for a while.
07:52And he's by no means some sort of liberal lefty.
07:56But his statement, I thought, was good.
07:58He said, look, we have made mistakes.
07:59We should have been quicker to admit them and to rectify them.
08:03But overall, there is not a problem of systematic bias in the BBC.
08:09And I think that's true.
08:10And we desperately need to defend that, not because, you know, I think the BBC is superior to any other news organisation.
08:17But it is uniquely universal, both in the UK and also globally.
08:23You know, there's like 500 million people use BBC services.
08:28And they are different because they try at least, like Force 24, they try at least to be objective.
08:35They try to be evidence-based and they try to be informed.
08:40At the end of the day, you mentioned the financial strain.
08:42Is that what the difference is, when you see US public broadcasters with a strong reputation of being independent in their coverage,
08:54like CBS, like ABC, bending the knee, especially with lawsuit threats from the US president?
09:03No, exactly.
09:04And I think, you know, be careful what you wish for if you're a critic of the BBC.
09:09If you reduce it, and God help us, if we lose it, then you lose an incredibly valuable asset.
09:15As I say, a valuable asset for the UK.
09:17I think it acts as a benchmark for journalism.
09:20It acts as a useful alternative for people, apart from, you know, the commercial news organisations.
09:29And if you talk to people, you know, in America, the one thing they would love to have is a substantial, serious, relatively objective source for their news.
09:40Because, as you said, those who, you know, are competing for advertising and so on are always going to be subject to threats to their profits.
09:51Charlie Beckett, so many thanks for being with us from London.
09:55Stay with us.
09:57There's much more to come.
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