Ed Davey has written an article for the Guardian continuing his uncompromising support of the BBC:
The BBC is under attack as never before. Donald Trump and his cronies have it squarely in their sights – and there are no prizes for guessing why. The BBC is the world’s number one source of trusted news, so of course snake-oil salesmen such as Trump see it as their enemy. If your power is built on conspiracy theories and distortions of the truth, the last thing you want is respected, independent journalists exposing that and holding you to account.
You can read the full article here.



5 Comments
The BBC broadcast a clip that joined two phrases from two different sentences Trump spoke some 53 minutes apart to make it appear he directly called on people to march to Congress and ‘fight’ – a complete distortion. BBC managers then defended this.
This was not ‘a mistake’ or ‘an error of judgement’. It was a deliberate attempt to mislead and damage Trump a week before the election. Shocking.
@Jenny, I have not seen anything to say BBC managers defended what happened, but took a long time to respond about it. They have apologised and two people resigned. The BBC have long tended to present too much what is sensational in news and not enough attention to facts and the whole truth, but we now need to support them in improvements.
As to the speech of Donald Trump, the bottom line is that he has since pardonned those who violently attacked the Capitol and remember some people died. That demonstrates that he was pleased about what happened and even used legal means to show approval of their violence. For that Trump should be utterly condemned and not given in to.
“I have not seen anything to say BBC managers defended what happened, but took a long time to respond about it.”
I and I believe many others think that taking so long to respond is the same as condoning what happen.
This is one of several reasons I think Jenny is right and Ed Davey is wrong on this matter.
Another reason is that if there is good evidence why put forward such obviously flawed evidence?
@Jenny Smith: How many Americans are likely to have watched the documentary in question? Probably not very many. I don’t know how much BBC programming gets shown in the US, but regardless, the BBC (World Service excepted) makes programmes primarily for its UK audience. In any case, most people will have already made up their minds about Trump and his alleged role in the Jan 6 2021 insurrection. A documentary made by the UK’s public service broadcaster for a UK audience is most unlikely to have changed any minds of US voters before the election.
PS It’s telling that Trump has only just now found out about a documentary originally broadcast in October last year. So if it was broadcast at all in the US, then it had negligible impact there at the time.
Anyway there is plenty of evidence that Trump actively supported the insurrection; there would have been no need to fabricate any such evidence.