For the best part of a week, since the Telegraph first broke its story – reporting a leaked internal BBC memo – I haven’t been able to understand why the BBC did not get on the front foot in the face of a deluge of damaging headlines about claims of systemic bias.
It needed to divide the allegations into two distinct stories.
The first, about the edit of the Trump speech in the Panorama programme, needed addressing immediately. Either with a swift apology – or indeed a case made for why the BBC believed it had not mischaracterised the president’s words.
That would have allowed the BBC to come out fighting more widely on behalf of its journalism. Remember, it was being accused of institutional bias. Of a lack of impartiality. Accusations that cut to the heart of its news operation.
With an apology for the mistake around the Panorama (or a robust defence), it could have gone on to try to refute the other claims about institutional bias.
It could have said that the BBC had already been taking action to ensure editorial impartiality, and had already acted, for example, on issues at BBC Arabic which was accused in the leaked memo of anti-Israel bias in its coverage of the war in Gaza.
Instead the BBC allowed the story to fester – and we ended up in a situation where the Trump White House was calling the BBC “fake news” and it had some traction.
My understanding from multiple sources inside the BBC is that a statement on Panorama had been ready to go for days.
The BBC planned to say on the Trump edit that it hadn’t intended to mislead the public, but that in light of looking at it again, it believed there should have been some kind of white flash or wipe, to make clear to audiences that these were two distinct parts of the speech.
I understand Deborah Turness became more and more angry and frustrated as the week went on because she was prevented by the Board from putting out that apology.
Instead the BBC Board decided a letter to the Culture Media and Sport Committee was the way to go.
(Others have told me it’s not as clearcut as this characterisation. That it took some time for news bosses to accept the Panorama edit had been an error and that there were discussions on all sides on how to respond.)
