BBC bosses treat allegations of ‘systemic bias’ seriously, says Nandy

BBC management is treating allegations of “systemic bias” with “the seriousness this demands”, the Culture Secretary has said.

Lisa Nandy’s comments to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg program came after it was reported that a Panorama documentary misled viewers by editing out a speech by US President Donald Trump.

The Telegraph published details of a leaked internal BBC memo that suggested the program edited two parts of Trump’s speech together to make it appear to explicitly encourage the January 2021 Capitol riots.

BBC chairman Samir Shah will give a response to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Monday. The BBC is expected to apologize for the way the speech was edited.

The leaked memo came from Michael Prescott, former independent outside counsel to the station’s editorial standards committee. He left office in June.

Nandy said the Panorama issue was “very serious” but that a number of “very serious allegations” had been made about the broadcaster, “the most serious of which is that there is systemic bias in the way difficult issues are reported on the BBC”.

He added that he had “full confidence” that Shah and BBC director-general Tim Davie were treating the allegations seriously.

Prescott expressed concern about the documentary ‘Trump: A Second Chance?’ which was broadcast last year and made for the BBC by independent production company October Films Ltd, which was also contacted for comment.

In his speech in Washington DC on January 6, 2024, Trump said: “We are going to walk to the Capitol and we will cheer on our brave senators, congressmen and congresswomen.”

However, in the Panorama issue he was shown saying, “We’re going to walk to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

The two sections of the speech that were edited together were more than 50 minutes apart.

The “fight like hell” comment was taken from a section where President Trump was discussing how “corrupt” the US election was. In total, he used the words “fight” or “fight” 20 times in the speech.

The culture secretary added: “I do want to see [Shah’s] response to the select committee and I will of course consider it and have further discussions with them about the steps they are taking.”

Nandy said he had two main concerns regarding the BBC, including the use of “inconsistent” language in reporting.

She said: “What tends to happen at the BBC is that decisions about editorial standards, editorial guidelines, the type of language used in reporting, are totally inconsistent.

“It is not always up to the highest standards, it is not always well thought out and the decision is often left to individual journalists or news readers.

“That’s something I’ve discussed at length with the CEO and the president, and it’s something I hope they take on board.

“My second concern about the BBC is that increasingly they are operating in a media environment where news and facts are often confused with controversy and opinion, and I think that is creating a very, very dangerous environment in this country where people can’t trust what they see.”

As well as the Panorama documentary, the BBC has come under scrutiny over a number of different issues in recent weeks.

The Telegraph also reported that Prescott expressed concern about the lack of action to address “systemic issues” of bias in the BBC Arabic coverage of the Israel-Gaza war.

In response, a BBC spokesperson said: “Where errors have been made or errors have occurred, we have recognized them at the time and taken action.”

He added: “We have also previously recognized that certain contributors should not have been used and have improved our processes to prevent this from happening again.”

Reports also said Prescott expressed concerns about the BBC’s coverage of trans issues.

On Thursday, the BBC upheld 20 impartiality complaints about the way presenter Martine Croxall altered a script she was reading live on the BBC News channel, which referred to “pregnant people” earlier this year.

The presenter changed her script to say “women”, and the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit said it considered her facial expression, saying she gave the “strong impression of expressing a personal opinion on a controversial matter”.