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A longtime BBC anchor said the majority of board members who control the British broadcaster feel it has “a problem of institutional bias reflected in the coverage” of President Donald Trump.
The BBC has been engulfed in criticism over a BBC Panorama documentary about Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, speech that he delivered before the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Critics say the documentary was misleading because it omitted Trump urging supporters to protest peacefully, and the BBC director-general Tim Davie and BBC News and Current Affairs chief Deborah Turness both stepped down in recent days amid the growing controversy.
Trump’s legal team sent a scathing notice of intent to bring a civil action lawsuit on Sunday to the BBC, demanding that “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” made about Trump must be retracted immediately or else he will file a $1 billion lawsuit.
Longtime BBC anchor Nick Robinson took to X to explain “what is happening at the BBC.” (Jeff Overs/BBC News & Current Affairs via Getty Images)
BBC anchor Nick Robinson offered his thoughts on the growing “crisis.”
“What has happened … what is happening at the BBC? In normal times you might be forgiven for dismissing that question as naval gazing by journalists who can’t resist talking about themselves. In normal times I’d be inclined to agree with you. These, though, are not normal times,” Robinson wrote on X.
“Those at the top of the BBC have appeared paralysed for the past week — unable to agree what to say not just about the editing of Donald Trump’s speech by Panorama but also wider claims of institutional bias,” he continued.
Robinson said the “BBC is run by a board made up of the leaders of the major divisions of the corporation and part time directors appointed by the government of the day,” who don’t align with news executives and journalists.
“BBC News executives — the journalists who run the News division — agreed [on] the wording of a statement at the beginning of last week, admitting that it had been a mistake to edit together two different sections of Donald Trump’s speech on the day of the Capitol Hill riots without clearly signalling to the audience that the edit had been made. It would have concluded that despite this error there was ‘no intention to mislead’ the audience,” he wrote. “This was not enough for the BBC board, which refused to sign off the statement.”
BBC DIRECTOR-GENERAL AND UK NEWS CHIEF BOTH RESIGN OVER TRUMP SPEECH EDITING SCANDAL
President Donald Trump, seen here at Buckingham Palace in central London, is seeking to hold the BBC responsible for “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements.” (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Pressure against BBC leaders intensified after The Telegraph published excerpts from a whistleblower dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, a communications advisor hired by the BBC to review its editorial standards. The documents criticized some aspects of BBC coverage, including the Trump edit, and Robinson noted that it declared the documentary “created the impression that Trump said something he did not and, in doing so, materially misled viewers.”
When Turness stepped down, she said the controversy over the Trump documentary “has reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC, an institution that I love.”
Robinson wrote, “Neither she nor the outgoing Director General Tim Davie explained what they thought had gone wrong” in their exit announcements.
“A majority of the BBC Board appear to agree with their editorial adviser that there is a problem of institutional bias reflected in the coverage of Donald Trump, Gaza/Israel and trans rights. That argument has been led by one board member Sir Robbie Gibb – a former BBC executive in charge of political programmes [sic] who became Prime Minister Theresa May’s Downing Street Director of Communications and one of those involved in the founding of GB News. Friends of Sir Robbie insist he has repeatedly and consistently supported Tim Davie and wanted him to stay and has written articles supporting the BBC and the licence [sic] fee,” Robinson wrote.
BBC director-general Tim Davie stepped down after criticism that a documentary omitted President Donald Trump’s call for peaceful protest on January 6. (AP)
The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Robinson’s post. The network previously told Fox News Digital it was reviewing Trump’s legal threat.
A spokesman for President Trump’s legal team provided the following statement to Fox News Digital: “The BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally and deceitfully editing its documentary in order to try and interfere in the Presidential Election. President Trump will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in lies, deception, and fake news.”
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Fox News Digital’s Emma Bussey contributed to this report.