An ex-BBC executive producer has highlighted the “very worrying” detail of the broadcaster’s latest scandal, after being found to have doctored footage of US President Donald Trump.
Speaking to GB News, David Elstein hit out at the “deep cultural issue” at the BBC and said the decision “needs more scrutiny”.
Detailing the BBC’s leaked dossier with The People’s Channel, The Telegraph’s Associate Editor Gordon Rayner who uncovered the doctoring claimed The White House are “looking into” the edited footage.
In the Panorama programme, the US President appears to say: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you and we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not gonna have a country any more.”
Former BBC Executive Producer David Elstein pinpointed the ‘worrying’ culture of the BBC after their edit of Donald Trump’s January 6 speech has been revealed
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However, Mr Trump had told crowds that people will be marching to the Capitol building to “peacefully and patriotically make their voices heard”.
Delivering his verdict on the doctored speech, Mr Elstein told GB News: “It doesn’t look in the least good, and it’s obviously deliberate, it’s been done for a purpose. And this kind of misleading editing is completely contrary to what the BBC is meant to be doing.
“I’m slightly surprised that Michael Prescott or somebody else in this loop hasn’t taken it to Ofcom, which is the media regulator.”
Recalling a time where he took a BBC documentary to Ofcom himself, he added: “Some years ago, I took a BBC documentary to Ofcom, which had misleadingly edited one of its interviewees. BBC deeply resisted the complaint, and Ofcom forced them to broadcast a two minute apology, and they were bang to rights then and there.
“So it’s a mystery that the whole board appeared to have had this 19-page dossier for two months, and it’s only just become public. There is something deeply wrong here.”
Asked by host Martin Daubney if the position of Director General Tim Davie comes into question over the incident, Mr Elstein said: “Tim, although he’s nominally the Editor in Chief of the BBC, is not actually from an editorial background, he’s from a commercial background.
“The last time a BBC Director General resigned over an editorialist who was George Entwistle of the Lord McAlpine scandal, and he, of course, had come through the editorial line to become Director General.”
He stated: “I think it’s much more serious than Tim Davie. The Chairman, who is a very, very experienced current affairs producer, decades in the industry, for him to either ignore or suppress all of this is very worrying.
Mr Elstein told GB News that the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy should be ‘scrutinising’ the BBC for their decision
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GB NEWS
“For the whole of the board to be involved, to know about it and to apparently be doing nothing. The BBC has been through scandals as bad as this, the Martin Bashir scandal, the Cliff Richard scandal, the McAlpine scandal, absolutely. But I don’t think this is just the Director General. I think it’s a much deeper cultural issue.”
Calling on the Commons select committee to be “scrutinising” the BBC’s error, Mr Elstein concluded: “And I think the rest of the dossier listing all the different ways in which the Trump-Kamala election was misreported by the BBC, that’s even more worrying than clipping together unrelated bits of Donald Trump’s speech.
“This needs a great deal more scrutiny. The Commons select committee should be scrutinising it. Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State, should be scrutinising it.
“And the BBC board, particularly the Chairman, needs to be called to account.”