BBC is sorry for 'misleading' editing of J6 Trump speech: apologizes vociferously

Oh, the humanity. Or should I say, the BBC-ity? 

The once-mighty British Broadcasting Corporation, that bastion of impartiality (stop laughing), has slunk into a full-throated apology to President Donald Trump after one of their dusty old documentaries got caught with its pants down in a blatant case of video voodoo. You know, the kind where they stitch together clips like a mad tailor on a bender to make the Orange Man look like he's auditioning for a sequel to The Purge.

It all stems from a 2024 Panorama special titled "Trump: A Second Chance?"  And let's face it, nothing says "second chance" like dredging up January 6th a week before the election to remind everyone why you hate the guy. Trump's legal eagles spotted the hack job and fired off a salvo, calling the clip "defamatory and false." It took Trump's actual words, calm as a sloth on tranquilizers, to then splice them together with "fight like hell" rhetoric to paint him as the pied piper of pitchforks. 

Classic media malfeasance, served with a side of crumpets.

In the reality of unedited glory, PresidentTrump said: "We’re going to walk down,  and I'll be there with you. … We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave Senators and Congressmen and women," before adding: "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

But in the BBC's funhouse mirror version it becomes: "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're not gonna have a country anymore." They didn't just edit; they Frankensteined three clips, yanking one from nearly an hour later like it was all one seamless call to arms. Subtle as a sledgehammer.

Enter Michael Prescott, the ex-independent watchdog for the BBC's Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC), because nothing screams "trust us" like acronyms that sound like rejected Bond villains. He dropped a 19-page takedown, concluding that "in the worst-case scenario, it does appear to be an attempt to influence the election," though he charitably noted it's unlikely many Yanks tuned in before voting day. (Pro tip to Beeb: If you're meddling in American politics, at least make it binge-worthy.)

Trump, never one to suffer fools or fuzzy edits gladly, rattled the saber with a $1 billion lawsuit threat unless they yanked the doc and groveled. His attorney, Alejandro Brito, fired off the missive: a demand for a "full and fair retraction of the documentary and any other false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements about President Trump," plus an apology, compensation, and a hard deadline of 5:00 p.m. EST on Friday, November 14th.

CNN, in a rare moment of not being the story, reported on it Monday. "Overwhelming financial and reputational harm," the lawyers warned, because nothing says "libel" like turning a taxpayer-funded outfit into Trump's personal piñata.

The fallout? Two BBC bigwigs, Director-General Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness, bailed on Sunday, presumably to polish their résumés for openings at MSNBC. 

The BBC's mea culpa dropped Thursday: "The BBC acknowledged that their edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action."

Not an accident.

And get this: BBC chair Samir Shah penned a personal "sorry-not-sorry" to the White House on Sunday, vowing no rebroadcasts. A spokesperson added the fine print: "While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim."

Balderdash, BBC. It was obviously intentional--you don't edit by cutting out the middle and make it sounds like Trump was calling for a civil war.

What the BBC was saying was: "We goofed, but sue us and we'll see you in court, cheerio!" Even the Brits are in a tizzy. Labor MP Lisa Nandy defended the Beeb in Parliament, cooing: "It is by far the most widely used and trusted source of news in the United Kingdom. At a time when the lines are being dangerously blurred between fact and opinion, news and polemic, the BBC stands apart." (Said the woman from the party that thinks "trust" is a four-letter word.)

Meanwhile, furious callers jammed a BBC radio show, one bellowing: "If we have to pay a penny to Trump, then I'm sorry, I'm not going to pay my TV license. The world just seems to be frightened of him. I think the BBC needs to stand up to him."

Frightened? Sweet-cheeks, the BBC just learned what happens when you poke the Trump bear with a rusty editing bayonet. In the end, this is peak establishment panic: a global media giant reduced to whimpering apologies because they couldn't resist one last swing at the man who refuses to stay down. 

Trump needs to see this one out to the end and sue.

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