Fake News, International Division
President Trump has rejected the BBC’s apology for editing his speech on January 6, 2021 to make him look like an insurrectionist. Splicing together two unrelated parts of his speech, in a program that aired days before the 2024 election, the British Broadcasting Company crossed whatever journalistic principles it once had to become full-blown propagandists. The Beeb now insists the deception was NOT defamation.
Not defamation? Trump is not backing down and is suing the BBC for $1 billion. Maybe that will pay for his presidential library. Or three new big beautiful ballrooms.
Now it turns out that the BBC’s famous Panorama show (think 60 Minutes) was not the only network show that became what George Orwell described in his novel 1984 — a misinformation headquarters euphemistically called the Ministry of Truth. The BBC’s staple — Newsnight — repeated the slander.
Both programs reported Trump as saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.” So far, accurate. Then both programs spliced in a line from later in the speech, “And we fight. We flight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.” To which Newsnight broadcaster Kirsty Wark added, “And fight they did,” as the BBC aired footage of the riots at the Capitol. In legal circles, said Jeff Childers of Covid & Coffee, that could suggest intent to defame.
Taking the cue, similar distortions were broadcast in Sweden, Australia and from European Union Broadcasting. A voter in Sweden, Evelina Hahne, posted a plea on X.
Dear Mr. President,
As a Swede, please take legal action against Swedish state media for making the same deceptive editors as the BBC. They have relentlessly smeared you from the very beginning and are operated by far-leftists. Don’t let them get away with this.
I asked Grok, Elon Musk’s reliable AI tool, if it was illegal for a foreign corporation to try to influence U.S. elections. Apparently it’s in the gray zone. Then I asked her (are AI tools female?) about in-kind contributions — not writing a check to the Kamala Harris campaign but actually helping her cause. Here is Grok’s answer:
Virtually every realistic form of “help” a foreign government or foreign national could give a U.S. campaign—data, research, ads, hacked material, free staff time if coordinated, etc.—is treated as an illegal in-kind contribution under 52 U.S.C. § 30121. There is no meaningful legal difference between writing a check and providing something else of value.
Something to ponder.
Nigel Farage, head of Reform UK who will hopefully win the prime minister’s office after the next elections, has called for a wholesale remake of the BBC, saying the network has been institutionally biased for decades. The taxpayer-supported broadcasting giant has embraced the full component of Woke issues — pushing transgenderism in sports, promoting the COVID vaccine on an unsuspecting public and insisting the Palestinians were under the boot not of Hamas but of Israel.
According to Mike Benz, the intel sleuth who keeps digging up dirt on the uniparty, BBC Media Action’s single biggest donor from 2022 to 2024, other than the British government itself, is USAID. To which Harmeet Dhillon, assistant AG for Civil Rights said, “Wait, so we fund the BBC, and in turn they defame our President?”
Two top ranked BBC officials have already resigned. Perhaps there will be others.
As for the White House, Karoline Leavitt said, “The president is very clear. The BBC is a leftist propaganda machine that is unfortunately subsidized by British taxpayers.”
An excellent professional take on a case underreported by MSM.