Former BBC executive unravels Trump speech edit controversy

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00:00The BBC is facing controversy and legal action over an edit that it made to President Trump's

00:06speech on January 6th in one of its documentaries. Now to better understand the inner workings,

00:12we're talking to a former BBC executive, Richard Sandbrook, who worked at the outlet for over 30

00:18years. He says the edit was misleading and that it should have been caught. He also describes the

00:24media landscape in the UK and identifies several parallels to the media in the US.

00:32I worked in the BBC for 30 years in total as a producer, program editor in news and then in

00:42management. Sandbrook has decades experience working for the BBC, a news outlet facing scrutiny over an

00:49edit made to President Trump's January 6th speech in a documentary that aired prior to last year's

00:55election. The BBC combining two sections of his speech into one seamless cut.

01:01We're going to walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you and we fight. We fight like hell.

01:09And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. We're going to walk down

01:14to the Capitol. And we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.

01:28And we fight. We fight like hell.

01:31In television, in daily news, as well as in long form, of course, speeches and interviews have to be

01:38edited down. And that's that's custom and practice and perfectly normal. But there is a

01:43responsibility on the producers to make sure they don't misrepresent what's being said.

01:49Sandbrook says that in his experience, there should have been several people involved in the

01:54project who could have flagged it. I think there were there were definitely a number of people who

01:59should have caught it. So there would have been a reporter. There would have been a producer.

02:04There would have been the picture editor, as we call them. Now, any one of those could have said,

02:08actually, this this edit isn't right. On top of that, there would have been an executive producer

02:14who would have had oversight over them who, again, should have caught it.

02:18After The Telegraph reported on what they called a misleading edit, a crisis at the BBC ensued.

02:25There were high profile resignations, a lengthy apology from the BBC board chairman and accusations

02:32of defamation by the White House.

02:34I also had a crisis at the BBC as when I was head of news, much as has been happening this week,

02:39when I fell out with the British government over their case for the war in Iraq.

02:46But I didn't have to resign. I stayed on for another six years. So these crises do come and go.

02:52Like here in the US, Sandbrook says trust in the media is deteriorating.

02:57We've seen trust in the media generally reduce much in line with with the way it has in the States

03:03and in other European countries, certainly.

03:04And there's also a similar partisan divide in the media there, where some outlets tend to report

03:10with a left and right political lean.

03:13Most of the newspapers are right-leaning and openly right-leaning. And broadcast in the UK

03:20is regulated to be objective and impartial. The Daily Telegraph is one of them. Daily Mail is the

03:25other obvious example. Rupert Murdoch's papers, The Times and The Sunday Times, perhaps as well,

03:30spend quite a lot of time attacking broadcasts for being too left-wing. Broadcasters believe they are

03:37neutral. And that's where the tension generally lies.

03:42Similar to NPR and PBS here in the US, which are partially funded with federal or taxpayer dollars,

03:50Sandbrook explains the BBC is funded by the public as well, but through a licensing fee.

03:56And that, he says, puts the organization under even greater scrutiny.

04:01Everybody in the UK who has a TV has to pay a license fee. It's viewed as public money and

04:08BBC is more accountable. It's not like a private corporation where the owners will say, well,

04:13it's our company, we'll do what we want. And everybody in Britain sort of thinks the BBC is

04:18part of them and that they own a slice of it. So therefore, the kind of accountability is that

04:24much higher. Several media watchdog organizations rate the BBC as being unbiased in the middle and

04:31in the center, according to Ad Fontes and All Sides ratings. However, All Sides writes bias reviews of

04:38this outlet have fluctuated between center and lean left results for years. BBC's online news has a

04:45center bias. However, BBC sometimes displays some lean left bias indicators.

04:51The BBC, like any news organization, makes mistakes sometimes. Every news organization makes mistakes

04:57sometimes. The important thing is to recognize them and admit to them and put them right. And part of

05:05the problem this time is the BBC is very slow to do that. But that's not to characterize all of its

05:10output as, you know, riddled with error. We sometimes, you know, turn the whole picture upside down because

05:16there is one big error that everyone leaps on and makes a great crisis out of. But all the rest of

05:22it is still carrying on to a very high standard. And I think we need to sometimes keep that perspective.

05:28We'll, of course, continue to follow any updates here. Thank you for watching our story. And thank you

05:33to Richard Sandbrook for taking the time to talk with us and for sharing his perspective on the issue.

05:39We've been following the BBC story closely. And there's another angle to this complex situation

05:44with the BBC's funding. The news outlet gets its funding through a public charter,

05:48which is reviewed and renewed every 10 years. The current agreement expires in 2027.

05:56To learn more about how the BBC is funded and what this upcoming charter review could mean for its

06:01future, download the SAN mobile app and search BBC funding. For Straight Arrow News, I'm Cara Rucker.

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