On Tuesday’s “PBS NewsHour,” CNN Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter stated that the BBC’s editing of President Donald Trump’s speech in a documentary was “a big journalistic screw-up, but in a very small, narrow way, because it was one small part of a long documentary, and, most importantly, because nobody seemed to notice it at the time.” And “Trump’s behavior that day, his combative tone in the speech, his repeated references to fight, all of that contributed to the producers’ decision to stitch these words together. There’s no indication that it was malicious, meaning it wasn’t intended to interfere with the U.S. election.”
Stelter said the speech was “edited in a way that was clearly a big screw-up. I would call this a big screw-up, a big journalistic screw-up, but in a very small, narrow way, because it was one small part of a long documentary, and, most importantly, because nobody seemed to notice it at the time. There was no outcry last year. There was no outrage. This only became a story about a week ago when a leaked memo, it was obtained by The Telegraph newspaper, exposing what went wrong in this documentary. Now Trump is calling for a retraction of the entire documentary, but, like I said, it’s a really thoughtful, nuanced film, with just one big mistake involving January 6.”
He added, “Trump’s behavior that day, his combative tone in the speech, his repeated references to fight, all of that contributed to the producers’ decision to stitch these words together. There’s no indication that it was malicious, meaning it wasn’t intended to interfere with the U.S. election. But it was something that happened during the production process, possibly by an outside production company. We don’t exactly know how it was reviewed by the BBC ahead of time or who, ultimately, is responsible.”
Stelter later stated that “when a newsroom at the BBC makes a self-inflicted wound, a screw-up like this, it does draw all the wrong kind of attention to the organization more broadly.”
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