Ten days ago a folder landed on the investigations desk at The Telegraph newspaper in London containing statements from an independent reviewer retained by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to analyse its output content.

The first of Michael Prescott’s comments relates to the BBC’s coverage of January 6th 2021, chiefly an address by President Donald Trump and whether this provoked the violent protest that erupted that same day. Of extreme concern to Prescott was the editing of Trump’s speech.

The corporation had taken over an hour of footage, then spliced its different parts together so when aired, one statement was blended with another statement – which occurred 54 minutes later in real time – resulting in a fake speech which most took at face value not knowing of the extreme manipulation that had occurred in the corporation's production studios.

As exercises in deceptive reporting go, it is arguably one of the most grotesque examples in living memory, but not only did its selective editing form the basis for its own editorial policies in future coverage of Trump’s confected role on January 6th, but the footage was franchised to other BBC brands such as Panorama, and was even established as an archive fixture-of-reference for its “disinformation” division, known as Verify.

That’s right: to its own “fact-checkers” it supplied crooked-bastard information – which these people could use to try and instigate social media dog piles. Remember: the BBC exists because citizens are forced to pay for it.

Gaza

A second issue revealed in Prescott’s comments relates to the corporation’s coverage of Gaza.

In his notes, Prescott accuses BBC Arabic of systemic anti-Israel bias in its Gaza war coverage, alleging that the service deliberately minimised Israeli suffering, hastily broadcast unverified allegations against Israel to portray it as the aggressor, parroted Hamas propaganda without adequate verification, amplified misinformation such as inflated casualty figures and fabricated "mass graves," and platformed contributors with antisemitic views – while ignoring internal warnings from personnel.

Examples highlighted by Prescott include the coverage of a July 2024 Hezbollah rocket attack on Majdal Shams, where BBC Arabic omitted details of the nine Israeli children killed and instead hyped Hezbollah's denials while suggesting Israel might have faked the incident, misreporting the South African government-aggravated International Court of Justice ruling as determining Israel's actions a "plausible genocide," (which it took months to correct), promoting unverified claims of 14 000 babies "hours from starvation" in Gaza (later revealed as an annual risk figure) and featuring reporters like Samer Elzaenen (who posted antisemitic content online and appeared 244 times) and Ahmed Alagha (who made dehumanising remarks about Jews and appeared over 500 times) – all while senior executives dismissed concerns and failed to publicly correct errors.

Here I must emphasise again: the BBC exists because of a Royal Charter imposed on British residents to fork out for this filth. If you don’t pay, it harasses you or gets its collection agencies to harass you.

LGBT

A third issue raised by Prescott relates to the lesbian, gay, bi, and trans (LGBT) desk – a desk you would expect as a powerful fixture in an organisation that resembles a mean parasite under the microscope. Here, Prescott makes the claim that the corporation’s own coverage of transgender issues is frequently censored – by its own “specialist” LGBT reporters – who refuse to cover gender-critical perspectives, suppress stories challenging gender identity, and fail to clarify that transgender women are biological males.

What is a “specialist LGBT” reporter? Are they especially gay? A respected journalist by the name of Nick Wallis was on the case last year: in a post, he claimed that he had warned the BBC Director General, Tim Davie, that its transgender coverage was out of control, that whereas many other media institutions across the world were beginning to rein in explicit enthusiasm for the social contagion, the BBC were accelerating in ways in which biased and confused reporting was the inevitable destination.

Davie, a noodle-armed modernist with a sharp haircut, was either powerless or too frightened to confront these forces – and frankly, who can blame him if it was the latter? Every single feature of the United Kingdom is held to ransom by the powerful transgender interest bodies, its activists, and even the allied civil service; perhaps a more contemporaneous equivalent is the artificial intelligence bubble, where speculation and over-charged expectation join artificial valuations all swelling off each other.

But trans controversy emerging from these leaks is probably standard; if a dossier about the BBC found its way to an investigations desk that didn’t contain evidence that its “especially gay” reporting was corrupt, then that would be, well, surprising.

Brushed off

Revelations from The Telegraph were initially brushed off by its executives famous for rolling their eyes at critics, such is the level of arrogance inside the organisation. But as last week progressed it became clear that The Telegraph’s findings would wind their way to places it would prefer they wouldn’t, namely, the Oval Office.

On Friday, President Donald Trump was reportedly briefed for the first time in the company of his press secretary Karoline Leavitt and advisor Steven Chueng. By that time, The Telegraph had established an investigations special or section beneath its title banner – something that was previously seen during the newspaper’s investigation of the parliamentary expenses scandal back in 2009.

On Friday evening, The Telegraph quoted sources confirming the briefing’s outcome: Trump goes to war with BBC. This prompted BBC Chair Samir Shah to announce that he would be sending a letter of apology to the British Parliament on Monday.

At midday on Saturday Shah, a decent man with the world’s most unenviable job, called his executives to examine the implications of Trump’s gathering fury, concluding that a letter was insufficient.

By Sunday midday, the corporation had run out of road, its fixers unable to revert with a coherent strategy to appease the world’s biggest media fixture. In the early afternoon, reports emerged that Deborah Turness, chief executive officer of BBC News with an arching portfolio that included every area exposed in The Telegraph’s investigation of the dossier, had thrown in the towel. At 5pm, Davie followed suit. Whatever happens in the hours and days ahead, one thing is clear: the modern way of Western journalism has met a critical moment.