Copyright Deadline
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press chief, has effectively declared victory after the bombshell resignation of the BBC‘s director general on Sunday. The BBC enraged the MAGA community after it was revealed that the corporation edited the president’s January 6 speech in a way that increased the sense that the president incited the 2021 Capitol riot. In a post on X/Twitter on Sunday, Leavitt posted the news that BBC director general Tim Davie had quit, suggesting it was a scalp for her boss. BBC News chief Deborah Turness has also resigned. Earlier in the week, Leavitt described the edited BBC Panorama documentary as evidence of disinformation about the U.S. president. “This purposefully dishonest, selectively edited clip by the BBC is further evidence that they are total, 100% fake news that should no longer be worth the time on the television screens of the great people of the United Kingdom,” she said. Concerns about the 2024 Panorama film originated in an excoriating leaked memo attacking BBC News output. Obtained by The Daily Telegraph, the document was penned by Michael Prescott, who was an external adviser to the BBC board’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee until June. In the Panorama documentary, Trump appears to say: “We’re gonna 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.” He actually said: “We’re gonna walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re gonna walk down, we’re gonna walk down any one you want but I think right here, we’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and we’re gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen.” Some 54 minutes later, when Trump was talking about the U.S. election being “corrupt,” he said: “Something’s wrong here, something’s really wrong, can’t have happened, and we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.” On Monday, chair Samir Shah will write to UK Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee to admit that a 2024 BBC Panorama film should not have altered Trump’s speech in the way it did. Shah is expected to tell lawmakers that the BBC has reviewed the Trump edit again in light of audience complaints in recent days, Deadline understands. Shah is expected to acknowledge that Panorama could have been clearer that Trump’s speech was changed, but he will say there was no intention to mislead viewers.
