Even Samir Shah's letter to MPs demonstrates the Turness/Munro "Forget It" approach to the Trump edit; essentially, "no-one complained", "it was what Trump meant", "It was before the election"...
She had to go, and so does Munro.
The editing of President Trump's speech on January 6th has attracted significant attention. This issue was the subject of discussion at EGSC in January 2025 and again in May 2025. There was concern expressed by members of the Committee, as well as Mr Prescott, of the way programme was edited. However, the EGSC also heard from BBC News that the purpose of editing the clip, was to convey the message of the speech made by President Trump so that Panorama's audience could better understand how it had been received by President Trump's supporters and what was happening on the ground at that time. This issue was considered and discussed as part of a wider review of the BBC's US Election coverage, commissioned by the Committee, rather than handled as a specific programme complaint, given it had not attracted significant audience feedback and had been transmitted before the US election, so the point wasn't pursued further at that time. The points raised in the review were relayed to the Panorama team, including the decision making on this edit. With hindsight, it would have been better to take more formal action.
Will there be formal action now ? Has anyone news of action taken over the Gaza documentary and Bob Vylan at Glastonbury ?
Well, quite. I seem to remember practically everyone at the BBC having to attend Safeguarding Trust courses around 2007-8 after the "Crowngate" malarkey (making Her Maj look grumpy by dishonest editing) and Blue Peter faking a competition. BBC staffers were told categorically that certain other practices - eg "fake lives", in which you pre-record something, intending to run it as if it were live - were unacceptable. I can't help feeling that similar measures should have been taken several times since, including as a response to the long string of editorial lapses that has now led to Deborah Turness's departure, and Tim Davie's. Not just so that senior execs can lecture their underlings about how things should be done; also to remind the execs themselves what's acceptable and what isn't.
ReplyDeleteBut even in 2007 we'd been there before. There was Ron Neil's Report in 2004 after the whole Andrew Gilligan/WMDs/David Kelly/Hutton business. He confessed himself amazed how many producers he spoke to in BBC News who considered themselves merely fixers, not "proper" journalists like reporters. He recommended the establishment of a residential college of journalism that BBC journalists, be they correspondents, reporters or producers, would attend throughout their careers to ensure they didn't forget the rules and start cutting corners.
That was realised as the non-residential BBC Academy, but on current evidence it seems that it has failed in its mission. Not only did some BBC journalists on Panorama think it was acceptable to perform misleading edits, the most senior News execs essentially agreed with them. Their verdict: normal practice. Oh, and Congress said Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election, so that somehow made the edit ok. What on earth happened to perhaps the most basic journalistic principle of all - that you 'stand up' a story based on evidence you source, as far as possible, yourself? That you don't play fast and loose with the actuality to make it fit a preconceived notion, whether a US Congressional committee agrees with you or not? So how on earth can an in-house academy of journalism succeed when its most senior journalists justify bad practices?
Ironically, the whole 'coup' explanation of what's just happened is just another excuse of the same sort. Not that it's necessarily false: it's very probably true that there are actors, inside and outside the BBC, who wanted to give it a good kicking, who may even have been put there for that purpose. But that doesn't invalidate their every criticism. In both cases, we see experienced journalists allowing their beliefs about the overarching situation to justify actions which, in the absence of those beliefs, would be unacceptable. It's a variety of "ends justify means".
Hey, Ron. You still about? Might have a job for you.
I'm just thinking, someone reading this who isn't a current or former BBC staff member would likely come away with the impression that the whole place is a shambles. If you feel aggrieved about the way the BBC carries on, or just because you're obliged to pay your licence fee even if you don't watch the BBC, I get it. But know this: the vast majority of people who work in the BBC get it too. They DO stick to what the Safeguarding Trust courses tell them, and most of them stuck to good practice beforehand.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is, most BBC output happens despite the management, not because of it. I don't think News was ever a well-managed outfit. But that doesn't matter 99 percent of the time; every day hundreds of news reports & programmes get made to high standards by people who understand what's acceptable & what isn't, and the management congratulate themselves on running a successful ship, when it owes hardly anything to them. What they should be focusing on is the 1 percent - and one way or another they fail to deal with it time after time.
If Ron Neil's college of journalism had been set up & run in the way he advised, would it have prevented the Panorama edit? Quite possibly, yes. The BBC should now run its Academy in that way, before it's too late. Spend the money, even if it means closing a service.
Calamities like the Gilligan broadcast, Crowngate, Ross/Brand, the Gaza mistakes, the Trump mis-edit should all be TAUGHT on journalism courses, alongside modules on bias via story selection & groupthink. There should be a "licence to practise journalism" that has to be renewed every year or two at compulsory face-to-face Academy courses, NOT wearisome, tick-box online training videos.
Everyone should attend, not just journalists; for every journalist or producer who makes a bad or questionable decision, there will be technicians & assistants present who should speak out. Safeguarding Trust made this clear: it's everyone's responsibility. Not least because everyone suffers when one or two mess up, and the management seem to be the first to forget the basic principles.