“Mistakes Have Been Made” by BBC Editing Trump Video

In a BBC documentary about President Trump, footage was edited in a way to mislead the audience. The situation is worth a class discussion about the ethics of editing and accountability.

The director general (top executive) and the head of news have resigned after criticism that combined segments of President Trump’s speech on January 6, before the Capitol attacks, purposely misled viewers. Here are the edited and original versions (click the image, right) showing parts spliced together:

BBC Video: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you don’t have a country anymore.”

Original Video: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

President Trump said that underlined bit 54 minutes later—so the “fight” parts weren’t so closely connected to approaching the capitol.

The BBC executives demonstrated accountability by resigning, but they use passive voice, which makes their apologies sound evasive:

“Overall, the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made, and as director general I have to take ultimate responsibility.” (director general)

“While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear: recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.” (head of news)

We might question who did the actual editing? Who make the mistakes? Yes, these leaders ultimately are in charge, but how did this happen? Without clearer accountability, critics may be more likely to assume bias in reporting, a serious accusation for a news organization of BBC’s stature. The issue also raises bigger questions about BBC’s editorial process.

As we might expect, the company may face additional problems: President Trump has threatened to sue for $1 billion.