00:00So, Isabel, yes, we've seen heads roll at the BBC over that editing of that Trump speech in a Panorama documentary.
00:08And many questions are being raised. Is the BBC institutionally biased? This keeps coming up.
00:15Donald Trump has said that this could have been election interference.
00:19He's very unhappy with the way that the BBC behaved. But I want to get your thoughts on this.
00:24Um, well, I think, you know, no one can defend what was done on the Panorama edit.
00:30It was absolutely awful. And as a journalist, I'm absolutely amazed, to be honest, that they got away with that and that it wasn't picked up sooner.
00:37Perfect. To be perfectly honest by anyone, that it came out through a leak.
00:41I mean, we were all privy to the speech. It is quite shocking to me that it has taken so long to come to light.
00:47Um, on the point about licence fee payers, um, possibly having to pay this billion dollar lawsuit, I really, by the way, think that's just hugely unlikely.
00:57I think it feeds into Trump's kind of, um, you know, rhetoric. He likes to be seen to be taking on the media that he disagrees with.
01:05Um, and he's often, as you've said, um, sued these media organisations in the United States.
01:11But, you know, the statute of limitation in the UK has already expired.
01:14So he can't take legal action from this country.
01:17And if he is going to file a lawsuit in the United States, he's got a couple of months left to do that.
01:21But he has to be able to prove that the Panorama documentary actually aired in the United States in order to be able to do that as a number one obstacle to him actually successfully making the licence fee payer pay out.
01:33And there's no evidence at this point that the Panorama was being aired there.
01:37But also there are, um, you know, enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, really strong US, um, freedoms of the press.
01:47And, you know, he as a president has done more, I would argue, than any previous president to try and undermine those in terms of, you know, pushing out, um, people from White House briefings that he doesn't like, asking questions, you know, receiving questions only from people who are favourable towards him.
02:02And the, the hypocrisy of him, um, turning around and accusing the BBC, um, of, you know, of in some way being institutionally biased, I, I can't let go.
02:13And that, you know, I did used to work there, full disclosure, but it's been 15 years since I left.
02:17Um, I also would point out that there's a big difference with the United States that when these organisations, um, that he's, he's taken on in the past,
02:26they don't tend to see heads roll in the way that we've seen Tim Davy and Deborah Turnis.
02:30I mean, those are really enormous scalps, you know, for, for context, for people who aren't in, in the United Kingdom.
02:37And Tim Davy oversees the whole of the BBC.
02:39You know, he's not the one just in terms of the news that, you know, Deborah was the CEO of that, which in itself is an, um, absolutely enormous worldwide operation.
02:48But Tim Davy sits on the board for, for everything. And those two scalps have gone. Now, you know, that's a huge price to pay.
02:55But I think really for the BBC, the biggest price that they are paying is this, you know, questioning now of their, um, trustworthiness.
03:03And, you know, they do remain the most trusted news organisation in this country.
03:08And I think that, you know, that isn't something that will go as a result of this.
03:12I think people can see for themselves that this was a, um, an absolute lapse of judgment and, and a terrible mistake.
03:18And, and I hope that it doesn't do untold damage to the BBC, because I think that on the whole, um, more than any other media organisation, they, they do work incredibly hard to be impartial.
03:29And my final point on this really is just to say that I do think that a lot of the people that come out, um, on the attack of the BBC the most are usually the ones who are themselves most flagrantly biased.
03:41Um, so there's a bit of hypocrisy, not just from Trump, but from other media organisations in this country.
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