Comments by Karoline Leavitt follow allegations that Panorama documentary misled viewers with its editing of a Trump speech
Donald Trump’s press secretary has described the BBC as “100% fake news” and a “propaganda machine” in an outspoken interview that comes after allegations of bias at the broadcaster.
Karoline Leavitt, a senior White House official in the Trump administration, said watching BBC bulletins while on trips to the UK “ruins” her day, saying taxpayers were being “forced to foot the bill for a leftist propaganda machine”.
Leavitt’s comments came after MPs said the corporation had “serious questions to answer” about the way a speech by the US president was edited by a BBC Panorama documentary. A document leaked to the Telegraph suggested that an episode of the current affairs programme “completely misled” viewers by splicing two parts of the speech together.
The programme showed Trump saying he would walk with his supporters to the Capitol before the riots on 6 January 2021, urging them to “fight like hell”. However, it omitted a section of the speech where Trump urged the crowd “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”.
It was reported late on Saturday that the BBC was expected to apologise for the way the speech was edited, with a BBC spokesperson saying the organisation’s chair would provide a “full response to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Monday”. In an interview with the Telegraph, Leavitt said: “This purposefully dishonest, selectively edited clip by the BBC is further evidence that they are total, 100% fake news that should no longer be worth the time on the television screens of the great people of the United Kingdom.
“Every time I travel to the United Kingdom with President Trump and am forced to watch the BBC in our hotel rooms, it ruins my day listening to their blatant propaganda and lies about the president of the United States and all that he’s doing to make America better and the world a safer place.”
The newspaper said its reporting was based on a memo written by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee. Prescott left his role earlier this year and has not commented on the document, understood to have been leaked by a whistleblower.
It published an extract that read: “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.”
The memo reportedly added that Prescott, a communications consultant and former political journalist, had raised concerns about the way BBC Arabic covered the war in Gaza.
The Telegraph said Prescott alleged there were “systemic problems”, which had not been addressed by senior management, claiming there were “stark differences” between the coverage of the war on BBC Arabic and on the main BBC website. One issue Prescott is said to have highlighted is the repeated use of commentators who were antisemitic or pro-Hamas.
The 19-page dossier is also reported to have criticised the BBC’s coverage of transgender issues, saying the broadcaster had been “captured by a small group of [staff] promoting the Stonewall view” of gender identity issues and that its LGBT desk would “decline to cover any stories raising difficult questions”.
It is said to have alleged that stories raising complex questions about trans issues were suppressed, with a “constant drip-feed of one-sided stories celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity”. In response, the BBC said: “While we don’t comment on leaked documents, when the BBC receives feedback it takes it seriously and considers it carefully.
“Michael Prescott is a former adviser to a board committee where differing views and opinions of our coverage are routinely discussed and debated.”
