The BBC has been accused of ‘shocking’ breaches of impartiality by a senior whistleblower.
Michael Prescott, who spent three years as an independent external adviser to the broadcaster’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC) before leaving the role in June, sent a damning internal dossier to the BBC Board last month after repeated warnings to the standards watchdog were ‘dismissed or ignored’.
In the memo, Prescott details how the corporation ‘doctored’ a speech by Donald Trump to make it appear like he had encouraged the Capitol Hill riots during an episode of Panorama.
The ‘mangled’ excerpt ‘completely misled’ viewers, when it was broadcast in October 2024, by showing the president telling supporters he was going to walk to the Capitol with them to ‘fight like hell”, when he actually said he would walk with them ‘to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard’.
The report said the programme made the US president ‘“say” things [he] never actually said’ by editing together footage from the start of his speech with something he said nearly an hour later.
When the Panorama 'distortion’ was raised with BBC managers, they ‘refused to accept there had been a breach of standards’.
The memo’s author subsequently warned Samir Shah, the BBC chairman, of the ‘very, very dangerous precedent’ set by Panorama but received no reply.
Other complaints in the memo accuse the corporation of ‘effective censorship’ of its coverage of the transgender debate and also takes...
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