It's still not clear who at the BBC spliced two speeches from 2021, when Trump urged supporters to protest at the U.S. Capitol, which devolved into a violent riot, but two senior executives at the BBC have now stepped down after it was discovered.
In documentary footage flagged by an independent BBC adviser, the BBC used speeches that were hours apart for “Trump: A Second Chance” that aired a month before the 2024 U.S. election. Even though Trump had told supporters to march “peacefully” to the Capitol, that comment was left out and viewers heard him tell the crowd to "fight like Hell" at the Capitol.
Trump threatened a lawsuit, claiming defamation, which likely prompted the forced resignations and an apology.
It's up in the air if a court would rule the dishonest footage is defamatory in nature but the news media and Democrats still claim today that Trump's fiery speech caused an "insurrection" against the government.
Now that the BBC’s bias reporting is in the news, Geoff Dickens of the Media Research Center told AFN the worst fake news he ever witnessed at the BBC came from Jeremy Bowen. Bowen, who is the BBC international editor, reported from Gaza in 2023 that an Israeli missile attack in Gaza City struck the Ahli-Arab hospital. Hundreds were reported killed.
“The missile hit the hospital not long after dark. You can hear the impact,” Bowen reported live. “The explosion destroyed Al-Ahli Hospital. The building was flattened.”
In reality, however, an investigation revealed it was likely a Hamas rocket that misfired and hit the Palestinian hospital's parking lot. So the hospital was not, in fact, reduced to a pile of rubble because of Israel.
When the BBC issued a correction three days later, Bowen and the BBC dishonestly claimed the BBC editor had never directly blamed the IDF for the missile attack. Bowen, however, had cited his own experience as a reporter in a war zone when he said the size of the explosion meant it came from an air strike by the IDF.
Bowen’s deceptive reporting was so egregious the BBC itself later grilled its own editor for its “Behind the Stories” news segment. A fellow reporter asked Bowen if he regretted his reporting that night, reminding him he had said the hospital was flattened.
Bowen, the seasoned war zone journalist, blamed his reporting on drone photo that appeared to show a “square that appeared to be flaming on all sides.”
“That was my conclusion from looking at the pictures,” he said. “And I was wrong on that. But I don’t feel too bad about that.”
“It’s at best lazy and hack,” Dickens said of that BBC reporting. “At worst, it’s deceptive and dishonest.”
