On Nov. 3, the Daily Telegraph published a memo it received from Michael Prescott, the BBC's former external adviser. It revealed that BBC Panorama had edited the wording of a speech by U.S. President Donald Trump in their documentary on Trump and the Capitol storming in 2024. Trump actually said, “We're going to walk down to the Capitol.” The problem was that the BBC presented it as if Trump had said the phrase, “And we fight. We fight like hell,” after that sentence, even though he said that 54 minutes later. With this, they made him appear more provocative. After the revelation, Trump threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion on Nov. 10.
BBC Director General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness resigned even before the threat. Some people reacted to this situation by saying that for years, nothing had happened from right-wing biased publications, but as soon as Trump was upset, high-level resignations followed, and they considered it a humiliation.
The BBC also apologized and retracted the episode, but refused to pay compensation. Lawyers for the BBC have written to Trump's legal team, expressing regret. However, they say, "We strongly disagree on the basis for a defamation claim." It is now up to Trump to decide how to proceed.
To fully understand this issue, it is important to know who Michael Prescott is, the person who gave the "BBC bias" memo to the Telegraph. According to Byline Times, he is “a right-wing lobbyist whose firm is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by U.S. tech and media giants with close ties to Trump, to whom they have donated millions.”
The following observation by Nafeez Ahmed, the author of the research, is also striking: “Prescott was reportedly appointed to the BBC advisory position under the influence of BBC Board member Sir Robbie Gibb, a co-founder and early fundraiser of the pro-Trump TV news station GB News co-owned by hedge fund multimillionaire Paul Marshall. Earlier this year, Marshall called for the BBC to be dismantled.” Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey also wrote about Gibb: “Robbie Gibb was appointed to the BBC Board by Boris Johnson, was an editorial adviser for GB News, and worked as Theresa May's Director of Comms. He is not impartial or neutral.”
Hanover Communications, where Prescott is a managing director, reportedly has long-standing ties to the Conservative Party. It's also noteworthy that Precott's firm represents major U.S. entertainment, media and tech companies like Oracle, Apple, Meta and Paramount. Oracle's billionaire founder, Larry Ellison, is known for being a major Trump ally and donor.
Furthermore, Prescott was previously appointed to choose the next Ofcom chairperson by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is a sycophantic Trump supporter and advocate for the U.K. to follow in the footsteps of the U.S. And “the BBC has confirmed to Nafeez Ahmed, three members of the four-member interview panel for Michael Prescott’s appointment to the BBC Editorial and Standards Committee had Conservative Party ties.” What all this information clearly shows is that Prescott, who lit the spark, was someone with close ties to Trumpists.
Following the Byline Times report, The New World released an expose that further illuminated the matter. According to the report, Prescott himself had altered Trump's words! In the document published by the Telegraph, Prescott omitted crucial parts of Trump's remarks about marching on the Capitol, citing only the peaceful nature of the remarks. Yet, after Trump had expressed that they would march on the Capitol, he also said the following: “Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.”
The parts Prescott conceals are open to interpretation as threatening. Therefore, he alters the overall message and how it felt. Indeed, The New World makes the following observation, which I find to be accurate: “Unlike the BBC’s edits – which at least accurately conveyed the overall impression of the march – Prescott’s edits gave a false impression of the comments.”
In the same media, Alastair Campbell wrote: “Yes, Panorama made mistakes over its Trump documentary. But the central facts haven’t changed: Trump did incite a riot at the Capitol, people died as a result ... Trump’s tactic of beating up on critical media and rewarding journalistic sycophancy is working for him in the U.S. Now it’s making its mark here ... The hard right populists and their corrupt media allies loathe the BBC not because it’s too 'pro-trans' or too 'anti-Israel' when in truth it is neither. They loathe it because they do not control it. ”
One point where I differ with Campbell, and it's worth remembering, is that even if the BBC is not truly “anti-Israel,” anyone who is not a complete lapdog is considered one on that side. The Telegraph's immediate use of this memo, with the message "Now we have the evidence. The BBC knowingly helped spread Hamas lies and hate," also points to the intention to turn the BBC into a complete lapdog of Israel.
Another fact that points to the Trumpist operation is the immediate adoption by British politicians close to Trump of his stance and their attack on the BBC.
Former Tory Prime Minister Liz Truss wrote, "X is the future, BBC is the past." Not to mention Boris Johnson and Reform U.K. leader Nigel Farage. These two are like the admins of Trump's War Room account on X.
However, their attitude has provoked a reaction from Britons who refuse to accept humiliation. The following tweet by Peter Jukes regarding these two is noteworthy in this context: “Directly colluding with a foreign government to take down the BBC feels like an act of supreme treachery.”
Moreover, on Nov. 11, the Russian Embassy X account in the U.K. also stepped in and attacked the BBC. Their echoing of Trump and Farage's talking points at this very moment was naturally interpreted not as a coincidence, but as “collaboration.” It must be said that these British politicians, who attempted to "fix" the BBC with the Russians and Americans, really came across as colonial politicians.
Timing is always a key consideration in these types of matters. Why would a man who is understood to be a Trump supporter bring up a program from nearly a year ago now? The answer may lie in the Epstein emails that exploded just days after the Trump-BBC affair broke.
The emails, which dominated the news on Nov. 12-13, indicate that Trump spent time with Epstein even during his first term, that Epstein told the Russians about Trump, weakening Trump's relations with Russia, and that Trump knew about the entire pedophilia affair and was even involved in it.
Since the emails are not the main focus of this article, they will not be discussed in detail, but the summary above is sufficient to illustrate the seriousness of the situation. Before these emails became public, Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, recommended watching GB News in the U.K. They were the ones who ignored the emails while they were rocking the entire British media. The BBC aired them despite Trump's threat of a lawsuit. Shortly before the threat, Epstein survivor Anouska De Georgiou was brought on the BBC screen, and she said that Ghislaine Maxwell introduced her to Trump.
And we know that his donors are buying up media everywhere. Even Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos was accused of betraying free speech in The Guardian's March 1 publication. It was alleged that Bezos's reduction of the newspaper's editorial content, his prevention of the newspaper from endorsing a presidential candidate for the first time in 30 years, and his donation to Trump were all motivated by his fear of Trump. This newspaper once had a writer like Drew Pearson who intimidated just about anyone, from General Douglas MacArthur to FBI Director Edgar Hoover. It could be argued that Trump, who has tamed such a place, is also trying to manipulate the BBC to his liking.
As Turks, we are all too familiar with the BBC's manipulative and false broadcasts; even a book could be written about them. Indeed, they made a mistake here. However, Trump might not have cared about this issue under different circumstances. In fact, if his own media had edited the speech, he might have even praised the editors, saying, “It's better this way.” But in this case, the circumstances and situation are different.
