The BBC should not alter the way it approaches editing TV news programs in the wake of the botched Donald Trump Panorama splice, which has led to a $10B legal action from the POTUS, a review has found.
Peter Johnston, the BBC’s editorial standards boss, has spent the past few weeks examining the excoriating Michael Prescott memo in depth, a memo that unearthed controversy around the Trump edit and led to the exits of the Director General and news boss. Trump’s legal threat concerns the Panorama being edited to make it appear that Trump was inciting violence at the January 6. riot.
Despite the edit having led to one of the BBC’s gravest crises in years, Johnston recommended no change to the guidelines on editing, instead saying “we will ensure the current guidelines are reinforced.”
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These guidelines state that the BBC should not normally:
- stage or re-stage action or events which are significant to the development of the action or narrative.
- inter-cut shots and sequences if the resulting juxtaposition of material leads to a materially misleading impression of events.
They add that “commentary and editing must never be used to give the audience a materially misleading impression of events or a contribution.”
“The key focus of public reaction and complaint following the leak of the [Prescott] memo were the concerns about the editing in the Trump Panorama programme,” wrote Johnston. “The BBC has now made it clear that the edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action. The BBC has apologised for that error of judgement.”
The decision may be viewed with interest by Trump’s team. Trump is suing the BBC in Florida for $10B for what he has termed “a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump.” The BBC has said it will defend the case but isn’t commenting further. Prescott has previously said the president’s reputation was not damaged by the splice.
Johnston said “more actions had been taken” by BBC than acknowledged by Prescott in his memo. He added that “work is ongoing and actions have been taken to broaden the base of our coverage in the US and to extend the range of voices and perspectives, under new dedicated senior leadership in Washington.”
Remove Samir Shah from editorial committee
Meanwhile, a separate review into the Editorial, Guidelines and Standards Committee, which previously counted Prescott as a member and from which so many of these issues have stemmed, has recommended that BBC chair Samir Shah be taken off the committee.
According to this review, which was conducted by BBC boad member Caroline Thomson and ex-BBC News boss Richard Sambrook, having a chair on the committee “has been identified as an issue as it takes away any opportunity to elevate issues through to the Board as the Chair’s roles are conflicted.”
Thomson and Sambrook suggest the chair should only get involved once editorial issues have been escalated.
The committee’s response to the Trump edit and to Director General Tim Davie and news boss Deborah Turness’ double resignation has been roundly criticized for its slow pace, although Shah has been firmly given the board’s backing.
In a recommendation which has echoes of satirical BBC comedy W1A, Sambrook and Thomson suggested the Editorial, Guidelines and Standards Committee change its name to the Editorial Standards Committee as this is a “shorter and more recognisable name.”
All findings of both reviews were unanimously accepted by the BBC Board and the reports were approved for publication at a meeting yesterday.