You may remember that in February the BBC found itself in a spot of bother regarding a film about the conflict in Gaza which, it transpired, had been narrated by the son of a Hamas minister. Some people, not least Jewish people, wondered if such an account perhaps might accidentally stray into the realms of partisanship, and the BBC was forced to withdraw the documentary forthwith. It then commissioned an internal report into why this young lad had been chosen to front the film, rather than, say, Rylan Clark or Clare Balding. As a consequence of the investigation, the BBC’s head of news, Deborah Turness, sent a round robin email to all BBC staff. Only now, nearly nine months later, can I reveal the disturbing truth about what Ms Turness told her colleagues. I reprint her letter below because I believe it is in the public interest to do so:
Hi everybody,
I wanted to write to you following the publication of the Peter Johnston review into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. It has not been an easy time. Why? Jews, Jews, Jews, Jews, Jews. For completeness, Jews, Jews and Jews. And I want to take this opportunity to tell you that I am incredibly proud of the work we do every day calling Israel a rogue state that’s committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing and mass murdering Palestinians. We believe this is public interest journalism. I also want to recognise the outstanding work of Hamas, for the professionalism and patience they show every day.
Yours, Deborah Turness.
Remarkable, isn’t it? Reading that missive you worry that you are in the presence of a demented anti-Semite. And yet those are the words which Ms Turness put in her email. Except – OK, here I confess – not exactly the same. They are her words – it’s just that I’ve changed the order of them around a bit. Spliced a few sentences together, replaced one word with another word, etc. Yes, we are in Morecambe and Wise territory – ‘I am playing all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order’, if you recall the conversation between Eric and André Previn, back when the BBC could be trusted.
Serves me right for believing anything broadcast by that convocation of dim-witted liberal humanities grads
If I were as arrogant as the BBC, I might try to justify my complete mangling of Ms Turness’s views as being ‘standard journalistic practice’, and that my very heavily rejigged and abbreviated form of her letter nonetheless accurately represented her sentiments. But it would be a downright lie, and it does not remotely represent her sentiments. So far as we know.
In an edition of Panorama broadcast in October last year, the production team spliced together two entirely separate comments by the defeated Donald Trump, speaking on 6 January to his enraged supporters, to make it look as if he was urging them to cause havoc at the White House, as indeed later occurred. In other words, Panorama wished the British viewer to believe that Trump had orchestrated that assault on democracy. They spliced together a segment of Trump’s speech where he said that he was going to walk with his supporters to the Capitol with another bit where he said his supporters should ‘fight like hell’. What Trump actually said to the MAGA thousands was that he was going to walk with them to the Capitol ‘to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard’. An almost diametrically opposite statement of intent to the one which the BBC put on air.
Now, I remember watching that Panorama. And I remember too being surprised and shocked by Trump’s words. I had previously argued with friends and colleagues who insisted that the President had been the architect of that chaos at the Capitol; give me the proof, I demanded. And for lo, here was the proof. Right before my eyes. Serves me right for being stupid enough to believe anything broadcast by that convocation of dim-witted liberal humanities grads, I suppose.
To my mind, this incident is rather more serious that the one Turness was addressing. It was a deliberate mangling of the truth to support a point of view held by the production team – and indeed most of the BBC, if we’re honest. It formed part of a series of ‘shocking’ breaches of impartiality, according to Michael Prescott, who spent three years as an external adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial guidelines and standards committee, before leaving the role in June. Not according to me, or the Board of Deputies – but to the BBC’s own adviser who, when he left, was seriously worried that the corporation was unable or unwilling to listen to criticism of its serially biased output. On Gaza as on most other stuff.
According to Prescott, when the allegations about the Panorama film were put to the BBC’s head of news content, Jonathan Munro, he replied: ‘There was no attempt to mislead the audience about the content or nature of Mr Trump’s speech before the riot at the Capitol. It’s normal practice to edit speeches into short-form clips.’ It was Munro, incidentally, who was involved in the appalling decision to commission a helicopter to pry on Cliff Richard’s home, telling a High Court that he had ‘no concerns’ about broadcasting the helicopter footage. He was also involved in the corporation’s decision to rehire the disgraced Martin Bashir.
Of course, it is the antithesis of normal journalistic practice to edit actuality in such a way that it suggests the precise reverse of what is the truth. It is one of the first things you get taught when training to be a journo: quotations should be edited only if they retain the sense of what is being said. That is why it was quite wrong of me to mangle Turness’s email to the staff and I’d like to offer her a full apology and wish her the very best in continuing with her brilliant stewardship of the BBC’s news coverage. What a great job she is doing.
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