Gavin Grey: UK correspondent on the investigation into the BBC's alleged doctoring of Trump speech

The BBC is under fire after reports surfaced claiming they misled viewers by editing a speech made by US President Donald Trump in 2021.

UK Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch is demanding the staff responsible must be sacked for misleading viewers over Trump's remarks.

UK correspondent Gavin Grey unpacked the reactions further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Devin Gray, UK correspondents with US. Hello, Gevin.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Right.

Speaker 1 (00:03):
So Kimmy bed Knock is now coming in for the BBC.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Is she Yes, she is? And there's a growing clamor
that today there could be some pretty tricky questions being
put in the Commons, the House of Commons today and
particularly aimed at the Culture Secretary. Because what happened is
in a program, a documentary just one week before the
US election last year, two parts of a speech that

(00:28):
were delivered by Donald Trump appeared to be stitched together,
edited together to make it appear as if the President
was encouraging supporters to riot. Those are the allegations. So
the quote that was played was this, We're going to
walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you,
and we fight. We fight like hell. And if you
don't like fight like hell, then you're not going to

(00:49):
have a country anymore. However, Donald Trump had actually told
his supporters to walk to the capital to quote peacefully
and patriotically make their voices heard. So that sentence peacefully
and patriotically make the voices heard is what is said
to have been edited out. And a former BBC journalist
and now turned whistlebler Michael Prescott has written this lengthy

(01:12):
report basically claiming that the public broadcaster has a huge
bias against Donald Trump and others and says he was
rather struck by the fact this program had an anti
Trump stance and there was not a program made about
Kamala Harris in a similar vein and saying that in
itself was unfair. So he's issued a nineteen page dossier

(01:34):
and the former journalist is also accusing, incidentally, the BBC
of pushing hamas lies. That's his quote over the coverage
of the war in Gaza. So some of these issues
may be brought up in Parliament today and Keemi Budden
at the head of the Opposition demanding heads role at
the BBC over this.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Do you think it has got to the stage where
the public want to see his role or is this
still just a political thing, a bit of about way thing.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Now I don't think. I mean, BBC's made a big
play in a recent campaign saying you can trust us,
we are you know, we're fighting for the truth and
we're fighting to bring you the truth every day, every
hour of every day, sort of thing that the promotion
goes and you can't have that in one hand and
then be accused of something else without the thing being

(02:19):
threshed out and heard. And I think it's extremely interesting
that while some are saying headspin's role here at the moment,
the Culture Secretary is saying, well, I think we need
to hear what the BBC has to say about this,
and is much more cautious of this. But there's no
doubt that you know that the traditional media here losing
a lot of viewers and listeners and readers to social

(02:43):
media outlets, and there is a huge concern over the
future of news. This would be a very very big
punch to the stomach and it will hurt a lot
of traditional broadcast as if the BBC has found to
be playing fast and loose in this.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Edit, Hey, how much did ellen Bits get?

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Well, it looks like multi million New Zealand dollars. So
Alan Bates is the Post Office campaigner and the payout
for Alan comes more than twenty years after he started
a campaign for justice for victims of the Horizon scandal.
That scandal. The Horizon is the name of the computer
program that was put into Post offices but simply wasn't

(03:22):
working properly and it led to some postmasters being accused
of stealing money which they hadn't and some of them
were sentenced to prison, and some of them even took
their own life. Sir Alan led this campaign at vast
expense to his own standing, his own health, and although
we're not going to get an exact figure made public

(03:42):
unless he does, I guess this is a very very
large sum of money. Between turned nineteen ninety nine and
twenty fifteen, more than nine hundred subpostmasters were wrongfully prosecuted
After this faulty horizon it system indicated shortfalls in branch accounts,
hundreds more poured their own money into their branch to

(04:03):
make up the apparent shortfalls.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Gavin, good to talk to you. We'll talk to you
in a couple of guys days again. That's Kevin Gray
are UK corresponding.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
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