The BBC is a once revered broadcaster which like so many other of Britain’s institutions has failed to live up to its once good reputation. It is a broadcaster that has been mired in scandal of various sorts over the years but who managed to avert major pushback from the public because it is a useful mouthpiece for the liberal/left Establishment and because it still carries residual trust among members of the British public. Despite these scandals which range from tolerating the abuses by BBC talent like Jimmy Savile through to telling British children the complete nonsense that there are ‘100 different genders’, the BBC has managed to survive. The ‘unique way that the BBC is funded’, aka the TV licence fee has also insulated the BBC from the sort of commercial pressures that force companies to pay attention to what their audience wants. The BBC should have been ‘Bud lite-ed’ years ago because of their bias and heavy handed editorial policies but the money from the licence fee has prevented this from happening. The BBC is virtually immune to public criticism but that doesn’t mean that they are invulnerable to assault from elsewhere.
Now it seems that the BBC have drawn the ire of US President Donald Trump and I am very very pleased to see this happening.
The BBC is being threatened with legal action by Mr Trump over a heavily edited and very misleading piece of film that knowingly and explicitly misrepresented Mr Trump’s words prior to the January 6th incident at the US Capitol building. The BBC’s video made it seem as if Mr Trump had encouraged the January 6th violence that occurred following the election of Joe Biden as President. Those of us who watched the January 6th incident unfold live or as live as possible recall that Mr Trump called for peaceful protests with regard to an election that Mr Trump believed was not as clean as it maybe could have been.
Now you don’t have to be a supporter of Mr Trump or his views to be concerned about the BBC’s actions in splicing together footage in order to make Mr Trump look bad. It would be bad enough for a commercial broadcaster with an agenda to do this but for a publicly funded organisation which claims impartiality and is closely linked to UK government to do this is even worse.
Mr Trump is demanding that the BBC retract the offending documentary about January 6th by Friday 14th of November or he will sue the BBC for what Mr Trump’s lawyers say was a ‘false and defamatory’ programme. Mr Trump is threatening to sue the BBC for a total of US$1 billion as compensation and damages for reputational harm allegedly created by the offending documentary,
I really hope that Mr Trump does sue the BBC and that the case forces reform on an organisation that in recent decades has been accused by various people of not working in the interests of the majority of the British public. Yes I know that any compensation will ultimately come from the pockets of the British taxpayer and licence fee payer but it will be worth it to see this now terrible organisation be humbled.
All media organisations have some form of editorial bias, pure impartiality is almost impossible to achieve but at the very least there should be some sort of balance in output something the BBC seems to find it difficult to undertake. Programmes are constantly bent towards approval of those issues that the Establishment prefer. You will rarely see those vehemently opposed to the climate cult or excessive migration or who have concerns about Islamic extremism or women opposed to the cult of Trans being given equal airtime or consideration in the BBC’s output when compared to those who push the Establishment’s views on these subjects.
This bending of the words of Mr Trump to make it appear as if he was inciting violence on January 6th in a documentary that was aired prior to the 2024 US Presidential Election has already created a massive scandal that has claimed the scalps of both the Director General and the BBC’s Head of News. The decision of these higher level managers to jump ship over the revelations of manipulative editing are to be welcomed but I doubt that the BBC’s problems over this issue will end because of the departures of these high level individuals.
The BBC know they are in trouble because they’ve been trotting out all manner of celebrities and well known news reporters and others to defend the BBC over this scandal. The BBC would not have encouraged such support were it not for the fact that they are now in deep international political trouble.
Personally I want Mr Trump to sue the BBC. The money that Mr Trump might get if he wins is for me the lesser aim, the primary aim as I see it is any disclosure of the goings on in the BBC and in particular its News Department that might happen as a result of this case. If this occurs then we might get a great deal of information about how the BBC approaches stories that go against the Establishment’s narratives. This is because I believe such revelations will hurt the BBC far more than the loss of any licence payers money. Disclosure might tell Britons about how the BBC may have manipulated its news coverage not only over the issue of the defamation of Mr Trump but how they’ve covered a whole host of other stories and other subjects. We might for example find out much more than we know already why the BBC has an obsession with drag queens, or why it has pumped out Hamas propaganda during the current war between Israel and Hamas or why it did not cover the issue of Grooming Gangs earlier than they could have done or why the views of legitimate critics of the climate cult are not heard on BBC output?
Mr Trump suing the arse off of the BBC might hurt the BBC but it could be of great benefit to the people of Britain and it might even scour away the residual false trust that too many Britons have for the BBC. I’m waiting with great anticipation to see whether the BBC stonewalls on the issue of the threatened legal action or whether it does the right thing and apologises to Mr Trump along with removing the offending and very bent documentary on the subject of Mr Trump. It’s quite possible in the BBC’s hubris and arrogance it will try to defy this legal threat and if they do then it will be time to stock up on a whole load of popcorn as the lawyers for Mr Trump dig deep into the BBC’s culture of political bias. Go on Mr Trump, let’s roll.