Nov 3, 2025 minute read

An internal report has revealed that the BBC “doctored” a speech given by President Donald Trump, making it appear as though he had encouraged violence at the Capitol on January 6. The Panorama special aired one week before the 2024 presidential election.

Per the Telegraph, which viewed the internal whistleblower memo, the special “completely misled” viewers by showing Trump telling attendees he was going to walk with them to the Capitol to “fight like hell,” accompanied by foreboding music and video of people amassing on the Capitol, with nothing indicating that the footage and speech had been edited.

Trump had actually told them he would walk with the crowd to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” The “fight like hell” comments came around an hour later, while Trump spoke on elections being “corrupt.”

The 19-page dossier on BBC bias, compiled by Michael Prescott, a former member of the BBC’s standards committee, highlighted the “mangled” footage of the day from the outlet. The report stated that the Panorama program made Trump “‘say’ things [he] never actually said,” with the program splicing footage from the start of his speech with comments made nearly an hour later.

The one-hour special, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” also showed men waving flags marching on the Capitol after Trump wrote, which “created the impression Trump’s supporters had taken up his ‘call to arms,’” however, the footage had been taken before Trump began speaking.

The report stated that the program’s “distortion of the day’s events was so egregious that viewers would ask: ‘Why should the BBC be trusted, and where will this all end?'”

The report claimed that the BBC’s chairman and senior executive ignored complaints raised by the corporation’s standards watchdog. When the issue was raised with managers, they reportedly “refused to accept there had been a breach of standards.” The report’s author had warned BBC Chairman Samir Shah of the “very, very dangerous precedent” set by the special but did not receive a reply.

Prescott sent the report to the BBC Board, writing in a letter, “I departed [from the advisory role] with profound and unresolved concerns about the BBC…my view is that the Executive repeatedly failed to implement measures to resolve highlighted problems, and in many cases simply refused to acknowledge there was an issue at all.”

Prescott, who watched the program, noticed its “distinctly anti-Trump stance,” having 10 Trump critics and one supporter, and was “shocked” to find no similar program examining Kamala Harris.

Prescott said of the footage, “It was completely misleading to edit the clip in the way Panorama aired it. The fact that [Mr. Trump] did not explicitly exhort supporters to go down and fight at Capitol Hill was one of the reasons there were no federal charges for incitement to riot.”