I can see even more evidence that the edit wasn’t out of kilter with what happened on January 6 and didn’t mislead anybody except those who now claim to be shocked by what the Panorama editing team did.
If we go back to the Prescott memo leaked to The Telegraph: Revealed: The devastating memo that plunged the BBC into crisis, he claimed, “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.”
But that’s not quite right. Trump was impeached on a charge of “incitement to insurrection” and the dictionary definition of insurrection is a “violent uprising against an authority or government.” Prescott is splitting hairs.
I would love to see him trying to argue that Trump didn't 'explicitly' exhort his supporters to go down to the Capitol building and fight. Many of those supporters who were later convicted have told courts in sworn testimony and legal depositions that they went precisely because Trump urged them to.
The day before the Capitol riot, in Dalton, Georgia, he told a crowd of supporters that he would “fight like hell” to hold on to the presidency and appealed to Republicans in Congress to reverse the election result when they convened the next day to confirm Biden's victory. He apparently said that the electoral college voters won by Biden are “not gonna take this White House!”
And there's plenty more. A week before Xmas, he tweeted: "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!" On Boxing Day: "We will never give up. We will never concede."
What about after the event?
Congress formed a cross-party committee to look into what happened on 6 January. A press release on 9 June 2022, with opening statements by the chair Bennie Thompson (Democrat) and vice chair Liz Cheney (Republican) has these words:
"Donald Trump—the President of the United States—spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down the Capitol and subvert American democracy."
"January 6th was the culmination of an attempted coup. A brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after January 6th, to overthrow the Government. Violence was no accident. It represented Trump's last stand, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power."
"And, aware of the rioters' chants to ‘hang Mike Pence,' the President responded with this sentiment, ‘maybe our supporters have the right idea.' Mike Pence ‘deserves' it."
"Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them: that the election was stolen, and that he was the rightful President. President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack."
Were they all wrong? I really don't believe the BBC Panorama programme, with Trump's words as edited, conveyed a different impression. It simply avoided an hour of Trump ranting in his usual style.
Prescott says the committee was 'packed with Democrats', even though the vice chair was Republican and the daughter of a former Republican VP. He suggested their report was not an “objective source of truth.” But the testimony the committee heard was obtained in six public hearings.
Amazingly, Prescott appears to think there is some serious doubt about whether or not Trump incited the insurrection. There is not. He is hardly an impartial judge in any case, being a lobbyist working with several pro-Trump tech giants, according to The Byline Times.
Prescott also wrote that after watching another BBC programme, Trump: A Second Chance?, which aired a week before polling day in America, he "found it to be neither balanced nor impartial – it seemed to be taking a distinctly anti-Trump stance. Critics of the Republican presidential candidate vastly outnumbered those who argued for him. What examination there was of reasons for Trump’s popularity seemed to me insufficient given the overall balance of the programme."
"Given what I took to be the anti-Trump nature of the programme, I of course assumed there would be a similar, balancing Panorama programme about Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris the following week. I remain shocked that there was not."
But the programme was about how a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist and leader of an insurrection was having a second attempt at becoming POTUS. The idea that Harris should have been covered in order to provide ‘balance’ is risible given that the programme was never broadcast in the US. There was no obligation on the BBC to provide balance.
Prescott summarily dismissed the defence put forward by Jonathan Munro, deputy director of news at the BBC, which seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Prescott simply didn't agree with how the edit spliced two parts of Trump's 6 Jan exhortation together, which is fair enough, but it doesn't follow that he was right, and I don't believe any court, here or in the USA, would award substantial damages for defamation.
Just on a general point. The BBC’s detractors in the media are all from the political right and completely partisan. How many could survive the kind of scrutiny the BBC comes under when it comes to balance? The BBC is far from perfect, but it's much closer to it than any of its critics.
It has made mistakes, but giving in to Trump would be the worst ever.
