'A deliberate act to demonise a US president': how one Leeds viewer described the BBC's Trump speech tape

The US president made the threat after revelations a Panorama documentary had misleadingly edited a speech he gave just hours before the January 2021 riots in Washington DC.

The programme, aired in October last year, came under renewed scrutiny after a memo from Michael Prescott - former independent adviser to the BBC Board - was published in The Telegraph last week.

Prescott’s memo detailed how the documentary had misrepresented Trump’s remarks, prompting a storm of criticism both in the UK and abroad.

The fallout led to BBC Director-General Tim Davie and head of BBC News Deborah Turness resigning and the corporation issuing an apology to MPs over the handling of the broadcast.

Hundreds of Yorkshire Evening Post readers have taken to Facebook to share their views with debate raging over journalistic integrity, political bias and accountability at the BBC.

David Brown said: "It's nice to see Samar Shah, the BBC chairman, explaining that the editing of Trump’s speech was so the Panorama audience ‘could better understand how it was received by President Trump’s supporters and what was happening on the ground at that time’.

"How has he come to the conclusion that deliberately falsifying the speech and changing the sequence of events by splicing the tapes gave viewers a better understanding? Shah needs to take a long hard look at his role in this saga if he believes this distortion of the truth was an honest mistake."

Paul Anderson added: "We'd love to know how the BBC can describe the blatant manipulation of footage as a 'mistake' when it was a deliberate act to demonise a US president.”

Martin Widdowson, meanwhile, questions if there is enough diversity within the BBC: "They always pick from the same pool of people with similar core beliefs. Then, with the permission and support of like-minded people above and around them, they make the story match those beliefs, rather than report it."

Lee Bryan added: "You only have to go back to Orgreave when the footage was doctored, that’s when the state turned on the working class with its full force, Thatcher's paramilitary force."

Michael Wright added: "They need to make the BBC pay per view so I can take it off my TV like I did with Sky Sports."

Paul Rogers believes the ‘deliberate editing of the Trump speech by producers, editors, journalists and management at BBC news’ is just the tip of the iceberg.

"If responsible honest journalists are allowed to dig, many more examples of manipulated stories will be found at BBC News. No wonder the two leaders couldn't jump fast enough, because they know what was allowed to happen under their 'leadership',” he said.

Mike Haywood said: "I believe that the BBC is not biased! Anti British, Anti Brexit, Anti Jewish, Anti Reform, Anti UK Citizen and much more, in fact too many to mention! But NOT biased as they claim! Just like a simple mistake is not a fabrication of the truth but more a simple error of judgement!"

Karen Ironspirit added: "They need to get out of that institutionally biased silo! What more can you say than they are so institutionalised to not see where they have gone wrong and took that very sharp and long left turn!"