Disturbing BBC whistleblowing memo must be wake-up call for Auntie

I really, really dislike the BBC's much-vaunted "Verify". The so-called fact-checking operation casts a shadow over the rest of its news service. "Verify" claims to offer a sort of guarantee that what we're seeing or hearing is kosher, wholly untainted
by bias, disinformation, propaganda or spin.

So what about the rest of the bulletin on offer? The bits that haven't been verified? Are we to take these items with a pinch of salt? Distrust them? Be alert for the odd fib, distortion or exaggeration? Imagine if this newspaper had a "Verify" section on its news pages -articles were guaranteed to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

What would that say about reports on the other, "un-Verified" pages? Would we be obliged to read them with a large dose of suspicion and mistrust? I only ask these questions because of a disturbing internal BBC whistleblowing memo leaked to the Daily Telegraph this week.

It says that the corporation's flagship Panorama programme "doctored" a Donald Trump speech by making him appear to explicitly encourage the Capitol Hill riot. The allegations are, frankly, jaw-dropping.

The Panorama programme, broadcast a week before the 2024 US election, "completely misled" viewers by showing the president telling supporters he was going to walk to the Capitol with them to "fight like hell". In fact, he said he would walk with them "to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard".

It gets worse. The 19-page bombshell memo says that as well as splicing together footage from the start of Trump's speech with something he said nearly an hour later, thus creating a completely false narrative, Panorama showed flag-waving protesters marching on the Capitol on Jan 6 2021 after the president spoke.

That gave the impression they'd taken up his "call to arms". In fact, the footage was filmed before Trump had even begun to speak. See what Panorama did there?

In response, former BBC radio journalist Liz Kershaw tweeted on X: "This is NO surprise to me. I presented news and current affairs on the BBC from 1993 to 2011. The biased groupthink among its journalists had to be fought and rebalanced every day."

The allegations have more than a whiff of the BBC's "Crowngate" scandal in 2007, when footage of the late Queen was edited to make it look as if she was storming off from a photoshoot. That led to the resignation of the BBC1 controller.

For now, here's a holding strategy for the corporation. From now on, Panorama to be fact-checked - by "Verify". Every edition.