Panorama spliced together clips to make it appear clearer president encouraged attack, former external adviser says
The BBC has been accused of selectively editing a Donald Trump speech to make it appear clearer that he encouraged the US Capitol attack, according to a former external adviser to the corporation.
An edition of Panorama, broadcast a week before the US election, spliced together clips of a Trump speech made on 6 January 2021. The spliced clip suggested that Trump told the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”
The words were taken from sections of his speech almost an hour apart. It did not include a section in which Trump said he wanted supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”.
Concerns about the cut were raised in a memo by Michael Prescott, a former independent external adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee (EGSC). He left the role in the summer.
