Trump vs press: US Prez’s battle with BBC could threaten its global reach

London: When the BBC launched an expansion into the U.S. in June, its head of news promised “trust at a time of dramatic global uncertainty”.

Five months on, President Donald Trump is threatening a $5 billion lawsuit, governments long hostile to independent news are vowing to make life difficult for the British broadcaster and its news chief Deborah Turness has gone.

The crisis has been sparked by the admission that in a piece that aired before last year’s U.S. presidential election, the BBC’s flagship documentary programme “Panorama” spliced together parts of Trump’s speech on the day his supporters overran the Capitol in January 2021, making it look as though he had advocated violence.

While it has apologised and Director General Tim Davie and Turness have quit, the failure hands ammunition to Trump and his supporters who accuse mainstream outlets like the BBC of bias, sucking it into a broader battle over journalistic standards and freedom to report.

At risk is the credibility of an organisation that has long sought to be a standard-bearer for impartial journalism. The BBC broadcasts in 43 languages across 64 countries, reaching 418 million people every week, making it the biggest English-language digital news service in the world.

The World Service has been relied on in times of conflict, broadcasting to Nazi-occupied parts of Europe during World War Two, behind the Iron Curtain in the Cold War. To this day it is viewed as a vital resource in places such as African countries where democracy and freedom of speech are under threat.

The organisation is facing a barrage of criticism.

The White House has called the BBC “100% fake news” and a “propaganda machine”, terms that countries like Russia usually level at the 103-year-old broadcaster.

In India, where the BBC has clashed with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, an official told Reuters they would cite the Panorama edit the next time they had a problem.

“If they say that ethics and morals guide them to report impartially, we would say that they first need to wash away this episode from their history books before brandishing their standards to us,” the official said, declining to be named.

One diplomat from a G20 country that is normally hostile to the West told Reuters that it would now take a much tougher line with the BBC, saying that if an ally of Britain, like Trump, could sue, then so could they.

Russia, which is ranked 171st out of 180 countries by Reporters Without Borders for press freedom, said the BBC was nothing but a propaganda and disinformation tool.

Former BBC staff, media analysts and a historian of the corporation say the broadcaster can survive this crisis, but it cannot be seen to buckle in the face of pressure

from Trump. Agencies