ANALYSIS
Trump faced impeachment over the riots, and in a world where Republicans had more courage, he would have been found guilty
Ever since Donald Trump retook the White House in January, his team has been at war with the US media – and it’s a war Team Trump just keeps on winning.
Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16m (£12.2m) over the editing of a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, widely believed to be a payment to help the sale of the company go through. ABC News paid $15m (£11.5m) in a defamation settlement, for a case almost every legal expert thought it would win. YouTube paid Trump $24.5m (£18.8m) for suspending his account after the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, 2021.
Now it seems that some in Trump’s camp have the BBC in their sights. After an internal report by a former member of the BBC Standards Committee accused the corporation of dishonest editing in a Panorama documentary about 6 January, Donald Trump Jr blasted the public broadcaster.
“The FAKE NEWS’ reporters’ in the UK are just as dishonest and full of shit as the ones here in America!!!!” he posted to X. The White House told The Telegraph the BBC’s reporting was “outright lies … highlighting why countless Americans turn to alternative media sources to get their news”.
The controversy centres around how the BBC edited a speech that Trump gave to assembled demonstrators immediately before they marched on the Capitol – some of them armed, and equipped with cable ties and other material.
Many went on to invade the Capitol building itself. Federal investigators found the violence had been premeditated, for some, and that the disaster had only been narrowly averted thanks to the evacuation of lawmakers to safe rooms. The unrest was connected to five deaths.
The key accusation is that the BBC showed the US President saying: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be 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.”
In reality, this was spliced together from three different parts of a much longer speech. The author of the internal report – which is not an official BBC document – objects to this editing, in part because the US President also said at one point that the marchers should “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”.
The full speech is easily available for anyone to watch online and draw their own conclusions. Trump repeatedly tells the crowd that the election was stolen, that the votes were “illegal”, and that Congress needed to be pressured to change the result. He unambiguously demands that the result of the election be overturned. He clearly tells the crowd to “fight like hell” at the close of the speech, despite having briefly told them to be “peaceful” more than half an hour earlier.
Trump’s speech was hardly given in isolation, either. For weeks, Trump had been using every platform available to him to falsely accuse the Democrats of stealing an election that the government Trump led had overseen. He had whipped up a crowd with an untrue conspiracy and set them marching towards the Capitol, having falsely told them that a largely ceremonial confirmation of the vote was in reality an opportunity to change the result.
In the following hours, thousands of people tried to overthrow the election in a violent clash. At the time, this was not in dispute: Republicans, some of whom had feared for their lives, joined Democrats in condemning Trump’s actions. Thousands of those involved were convicted and jailed. Trump faced impeachment over the riots, and in a world where Republicans had more courage of their convictions, he would have been found guilty. In any sane world, he would have faced jail.
But now Trump has won; history has been rewritten. Trump pardoned every January 6 rioter, including those who engaged in violence. Tech companies have apologised to the US President for enforcing their policies against him as if he were just a regular citizen, and not above the law. Republicans know better than to speak out against Trump. January 6 is now “fake news”.
The BBC didn’t get January 6 wrong. It should be brave enough to say so. Whoever wrote the internal report seen by The Telegraph is either malign or mistaken. The way it has been weaponised to attack the BBC shows the folly of trying to appease Team Trump, or to negotiate with them in good faith.
Any concession will be seized upon to demand more. Any admission of fault will be used as proof of conspiracy. There is, in Trumpworld, no such thing as independent reporting or good-faith criticism. You are either with Trump, which means throwing aside consistency, independence, and any semblance of honest reporting, or you’re against him. Half measures won’t work.
The BBC is not an American broadcaster, and it doesn’t owe any obligation to shareholders determined to close deals and make profits. Its clash with Trump is a chance to show the advantages of being a public broadcaster, funded by the licence fee, by standing up for its reporting – and for the truth. It should seize that opportunity.
