Donald Trump’s press secretary has launched a fierce attack on the BBC, calling it “100% fake news” amid renewed accusations of bias at the broadcaster.
Karoline Leavitt, a senior White House official, criticised the corporation in an interview with the Telegraph, claiming its coverage amounts to “leftist propaganda” and saying that watching BBC bulletins during visits to the UK “ruins” her day. British taxpayers, she argued, were being “forced to foot the bill for a leftist propaganda machine”.
Her remarks follow mounting scrutiny over a BBC Panorama documentary that MPs say may have misled viewers in its editing of a 2021 speech by Donald Trump. A leaked document obtained by the Telegraph alleges the programme spliced together separate parts of Trump’s remarks, omitting a line urging supporters to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” before the 6 January Capitol riot. Instead, the documentary featured Trump telling supporters he would walk with them to the Capitol and urging them to “fight like hell”.
According to the Telegraph, the criticism comes from a memo written by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee. Prescott, who left the role earlier this year, has not commented publicly on the document, which is said to have been leaked by a whistleblower.
In an excerpt published by the newspaper, Prescott reportedly wrote: “It was completely misleading to edit the clip in the way Panorama aired it. The fact that he 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.”
The dossier also allegedly raises concerns about BBC Arabic’s coverage of the Gaza war, suggesting “systemic problems” within the service and “stark differences” between its reporting and that of the main BBC website. Prescott is said to have criticised the repeated use of commentators with antisemitic or pro-Hamas views.
Further claims in the 19-page memo reportedly accuse the broadcaster of failing to maintain balance on transgender issues, alleging the LGBT desk had been “captured by a small group” of staff aligned with Stonewall’s stance on gender identity. Stories raising complex or critical questions about trans issues were allegedly suppressed in favour of what the memo described as a “constant drip-feed” of positive coverage.
In a statement, the BBC said: “While we don’t comment on leaked documents, when the BBC receives feedback it takes it seriously and considers it carefully. Michael Prescott is a former adviser to a board committee where differing views and opinions of our coverage are routinely discussed and debated.” Photo by Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, Wikimedia commons.