When Donald Trump unleashes fury at the BBC, he speaks not merely for a bruised ego but for every citizen — American or British — who has ever trusted the public news service to honour the truth.
The Corporation’s mealy-mouthed apology for splicing his January 6 speech into a grotesque caricature of incitement was bad enough.
Yet Tim Davie, the Director-General, offered neither a personal apology nor a shred of remorse for an act that defamed a world leader and meddled in a foreign election — my country’s, no less. British taxpayers, compelled to fund this deception at £174.50 a year, have every right to share Trump’s outrage.
So do the millions worldwide who once regarded the BBC as journalism’s gold standard. That standard now lies in tatters, though the appalling bias has festered for decades.
Davie’s refusal to apologise personally — hiding behind boardroom platitudes even in resignation — is the final insult.
The edit itself was surgical malice. Trump’s explicit call to “peacefully and patriotically” protest vanished; his “fight like hell” was spliced to footage of chaos, crafting the impression of a president baying for blood.
Internal memos, leaked to the press, show the Panorama team knew the context months earlier — warnings reached the board as far back as May. Davie dithered.
This was no honest mistake — it was deliberate distortion, a breach of elementary ethics that would see any provincial editor sacked on the spot.
The BBC’s half-apology, delivered by a nervous executive board, admitted an “error of judgment”. Davie, the man ultimately responsible, said nothing substantive before quitting.
Tim Davie's response at the eleventh hour just put rocket boosters under Donald Trump's revenge - Lee Cohen
|Getty Images
His resignation statement claimed “ultimate responsibility” for mistakes, but no contrition for the lie that could have tilted an election.
This tells us all we need to know: contempt for the audience, contempt for the licence-fee payer, contempt for the democratic process itself.
This scandal is merely the latest eruption from a volcano of institutional bias.
On Israel, the BBC’s record is a disgrace to any nation that claims alliance with the Jewish state.
Hamas, proscribed as terrorists by His Majesty’s Government, are routinely labelled “militants” or “fighters” — just 3.2 per cent of mentions acknowledge their terrorist status, per exhaustive analysis.
Their spokesmen appear as sober analysts; their press releases are parroted without caveat. Documentaries have been narrated by the sons of terror commanders.
Reporters who have cheered “death to Israel” or likened Jews to vermin keep their jobs.
October 7 is reduced to a footnote beside endless footage of Gaza’s “catastrophic” fallout, often sourced unchecked from Hamas itself. The Corporation that once chronicled the Blitz now flinches from calling evil by its name.
At home, the rot is just as foul. Brexit, the greatest democratic mandate in modern British history, was treated as a tantrum by bigots — pro-Leave voices under-represented for years, as Cardiff University studies confirm.
Voters who chose sovereignty were mocked as buccaneers wrecking the national interest.
On gender, women defending single-sex spaces are marginalised while biological males collect awards in women’s categories — whistleblowers reveal a newsroom where dissent from progressive orthodoxy means professional suicide.
Climate change is presented as settled gospel; sceptics are banished, with the BBC now probing its own alarmist slant.
Immigration flows that strain schools and hospitals go unexamined, lest the BBC be accused of “pandering to the right”.
The same producers who demand apologies from guests for being “white and middle-class” platform radicals who call for Britain’s dissolution.
Impartiality, we are told, means outcomes the Corporation approves — never the other way round.
Davie’s predecessors at least pretended to care. He hid behind corporate statements and boardroom platitudes until resignation swallowed him whole on Sunday.
Without contrition, it means nothing. The BBC is not a private fiefdom; it is a public trust, built and sustained by compulsory fees extracted from pensioners and single mothers alike.
When it lies to defame an ally like Trump, it lies to us all. When it coddles Hamas apologists, it betrays the values British soldiers died to defend.
When it silences the majority who voted for Brexit, it spits on democracy itself.
Patriotic Britons have had enough. The licence fee is not a subscription to propaganda; it is a tax on truth. Trump’s threatened $1billion lawsuit is a wake-up call.
Let it echo in every household forced to fund this betrayal. Demand a real reckoning — not Davie’s vague “mistakes were made”, but on-air, unscripted, unequivocal contrition from the top.
Demand reform that dismantles the left-wing cliques and restores balance.
If the Corporation cannot serve the nation that pays for it, pull the plug. Our airwaves belong to the people, not propagandists.
The BBC once stood for Britain at its best: brave, fair, unflinching. Reclaim it — or replace it. Trump is right to be outraged. So should we all.
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