Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for deceptively editing his 6 January speech. Maybe he should also go after the German public broadcasters who did exactly the same thing
By now everyone knows about the scandal surrounding a BBC Panorama documentary called Trump: A Second Chance? This piece aired just days before the presidential election on 28 October 2024, and included a retrospective segment on Trump’s 6 January speech at the Ellipse near the White House. The filmmakers edited Trump’s remarks such that he appeared to say “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.” In fact, Trump actually said that “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.” Later he urged his supporters to protest “peacefully and patriotically,” and only in conclusion did he speak of metaphorical fighting.
The deceptive edit represents a clear attempt to portray Trump as the inciter of violence at the 6 January Capitol protests. At the start of this month, The Telegraph drew attention to a UK government report on the misleading nature of these Panorama edits. Within a week, BBC Director General Tim Davie and BBC CEO Deborah Turness both resigned. BBC Chair Samir Shah apologised directly to Trump for an “error of judgment,” and a BBC spokesperson emphasised that “the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited.” Trump has since threatened to file a defamation suit against the BBC, first for one billion dollars, and then for five billion.
Trump and his legal team should also take aim at the German public broadcaster ARD, because as Joan Meier of Die Weltwoche reports, their SWR division produced a Trump documentary with a deceptive edit nearly identical to that in the Panorama programme . This 90-minute histrionic propaganda piece, called Sturm auf das Kapitol (“The Storming of the Capitol”), aired nationwide on Das Erste on 6 January 2022, the first anniversary of the Capitol protests. Just under six minutes in, Sturm auf das Kapitol treats us to heavily edited video of Trump’s speech. With German voiceover, we hear Trump saying “…you’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong.” Then the filmmakers splice in the key line about fighting (“And we fight. We fight like hell.”) from nearly an hour later. Throughout, the video shows only the reactions of the crowd, artfully obscuring the edit and lending the impression that this was a single, continuous statement from Trump.
While the BBC have withdrawn their deceptive documentary, Sturm auf das Kapitol is still available on YouTube and on the ARD website. In response to inquiries from Meier, SWR remains unrepentant – denying that their edits are “misleading” and insisting that Trump’s omitted line about the necessity of protesting “peacefully and patriotically” is “irrelevant at this point,” because their sole purpose in this segment is to illustrate the reaction of the crowd. They also insist that their reporting aligns with “established standards of journalistic practice” and they actually accuse Weltwoche of being the “misleading” party for reporting on their deceptive edit.
What's the common theme here with ARD, BBC, NPR and PBS?
They are all publicly funded. There's the real problem.
The people working for these publicly funded organizations never suffer consequences. Yes, maybe the occasional head rolls, but for the most part, no matter what these organizations do, it’s always business as usual. It’s untouchable because, as with all bureaucracies, the taxpayers, who cannot take their money and go away, end up paying the price.
When our institutions grievously violate people’s trust and rights in ways that justify legal consequences, the individual bureaucrats walk away. Even if a few get fired, if what they did appealed to leftist sensibilities, they end up having cush paid gigs at news outlets or get massive book deals (which always have the smell of money laundering about them). The only ones who suffer are the trapped taxpayers.
So the obvious solution then is to remove taxpayer funding and let these organizations stand on its own merit and financing from investors.
Problem solved.
Is there anyone besides you who relates the truth in the whole of Europe. The leaderships are ignoramic globalists. They have destroyed freedom and their countries all for power and money