Are Trump's lawyers now controlling the BBC?

0:02Rutger Bregman:This is a Global Player original podcast. Hey everyone, I have some really disappointing news to share. And honestly, I wish this wasn't true. But the BBC has decided to censor the opening lecture of a series they invited me to give. They deleted the sentence in which I described Donald Trump as the most openly corrupt president in American history. That line is gone. It has been removed from the version broadcast this morning on BBC Radio 4.

0:34Alison Phillips:That is Rutger Bregman, the distinguished Dutch author and historian who had this year been asked to deliver the prestigious Reith Lectures. He's been shocked to discover that a key line about Donald Trump has mysteriously vanished from the recorded version when it was broadcast this morning.

0:54Rory Stewart:It comes as the BBC's bosses went before the Commons yesterday to say at the heart of everything we do is impartiality. Is this impartiality or is it cowardice? Is this the new BBC saying we just don't want to say anything that could in any way be seen as controversial? Welcome to the News Agents.

1:22Rory Stewart:The News Agents. It's John. It's Lewis. And when we had our morning meeting to discuss what we'd be doing on the newsagents today, we thought, yeah, the BBC story is good, but maybe we'll do that as a second half reflecting on what happened at the select committee yesterday, where sort of more or less everybody emerged unscathed. and then we saw this line about the wreath lectures having been edited and the comments from Rutger Bregman about the circumstances and we also heard what he said was the irony of what the BBC had just done have a listen last Wednesday I was told the sentence was being

2:03Rutger Bregman:discussed with US lawyers and at the highest levels inside the BBC for days they couldn't give me an answer. Yesterday they finally did. And the irony could not be bigger. Because this lecture, titled A Time of Monsters, is exactly about the cowardice of today's elites. About universities, corporations, and yes, media networks bending the need to authoritarianism. I find it hard to express how shocked I am by the BBC's decision. Because this is not just another media organization. And these lectures, known as the Reith Lectures, have for more than 75 years been one of the BBC's most important public platforms for big ideas and free expression.

2:51Rutger Bregman:This should concern everyone. Left, right, center. Of course people can disagree with the things I said. But to commission a lecture, take it through the full editorial process, record it before 500 people in the BBC radio theater in the heart of London and then censor it out of fear well that

3:11Alison Phillips:is something entirely different extraordinary statement from Rooker Bregman there just to give you a little bit of background in case in case you're not familiar so the key line here that Rooker Bregman gave in the first of these four lectures was this he called Trump the most openly corrupt president in American history. Just one sentence, one line, delivered in the live version of the event, which was made on the 28th of October. And yet when it was broadcast this morning on Radio 4 at 9am, mysteriously taken out, something that clearly Bregman, about which, is very unhappy. Just to give you some background in case you don't know what about the Reith lectures themselves.

3:55Alison Phillips:They are a very prestigious set of lectures, which are a sort of key part of the BBC's broadcasting calendar. They've been going for some 75 years. They're named after the founder of the BBC, John Reith, and they are supposed to be a series of provocative analyses of everything from culture to science to politics, democracy, you name it. There have been some very, very authoritative figures over the year who've delivered these lectures. You know, you've had Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, Aung San Suu Kyi, Margaret Macmillan, the author, Niall Ferguson, the historian, Mark Carney, of course, now the Prime Minister of Canada.

4:33Alison Phillips:And the entire point of them is that it is not a BBC journalist delivering these lectures. It is not someone who works for the corporation. They are supposed to be, yes, authoritative, yes, cerebral, yes, learned, yes, grounded in fact and reason, but nonetheless, a personal take and account and lecture of a key fundamental set of issues facing the modern world. And you can see in that context why it might be that a historian, like the gentleman in question here, would wish to describe Trump in that way.

5:06Rory Stewart:Yeah. And just a key point about the date that you just mentioned, Lewis, that this was recorded on the 28th of October, as you said, the speech that he was due to deliver would have been sent to bbc bosses in advance they would have had a review of the speech presumably someone uploaded it onto a teleprompter onto autocue so that people could read it people would have known in the bbc what that lecture it's a big thing it is a huge thing that's the 28th of october a few days later came the telegraph leak about the panorama edit and the BBC goes into a tailspin. That's on the 3rd of November. That's on the 3rd of November.

5:45Rory Stewart:It loses the director general. It loses the head of news. It goes up before the select committee. It has the threat of legal action from Donald Trump. Now, when I used to work at the BBC, people would say, well, which bit of the BBC did you work for? And I would say the B rather than the C. And there was always, I was a broadcaster. I wasn't part of the corporation. here it looks as though the corporate bbc has told the broadcasting bit of the bbc what it can and can't do and i can't think of such a blatant example as rooker bregman says of bending the knee to donald trump and even on the grounds of impartiality that the bbc is saying that's why we took the decision and on legal advice it is absolutely easy to make the case with a historical lens of why what Bregman is saying is true that Donald Trump is making a huge amount of money the Trump organization is continuing to make huge amounts of money where the presidency and the Trump organization are working in tandem look yes indeed and I think this obviously gets to

7:03Alison Phillips:the heart which we can talk a little bit more about about what impartiality means and why it's important just on that point at the very least what you can say is that bregman would be well within his rights and his means to justify that statement right many many people could argue very credibly that that is a true and factual statement that trump is the most corrupt president in history. Why? Two things. One, your average American president is not very corrupt. They may have lots of moral failings, endless numbers that we can talk about from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton and back again and going back into the 19th century.

7:43Alison Phillips:Many are venal. Many are highly sexed. Many are liars, all sorts of different things. But actual financial corruption is relatively rare to find. Right. And then by comparison to that, you have got Donald Trump, a man who before the presidency, during the presidency, after the presidency and back in the presidency again, has had any number of cases and incidents where he has clearly exhibited at the very least strong propensity and inclination towards corruption and has been found guilty of doing so. So just a few reminders, right? Trump withheld congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine to pressure its government into announcing an investigation into his political rival at the time, Joe Biden.

8:26Alison Phillips:That's corruption. He repeatedly has used the presidency to funnel governments, lobbyists and political groups to his own hotels and golf clubs, personally profiting while in office. He asked the Georgia secretary of state to find, quote, 11 ,780 votes in an overt attempt to overthrow the certified election result of 2020. 20 and we could go on and we could go on and we could go on and therefore for a wreath lecturer someone who is coming in to give a wider and this is a sort of relatively throwaway line but it is to give a sort of wider sense of where politics is where it's been going the corruption arguably of politics itself he's on extremely firm foundations in that statement and it is pretty chilling, I think we can say, largely a result of the legal threat, I suspect, that is going on.

9:17Alison Phillips:In fact, it's not just a question of suspect. The BBC in their statement have been quite clear that they have taken this decision on legal advice, almost certainly, presumably, as a result of the threat of litigation that the Trump White House has made against the BBC. And this is what litigation does from someone like Trump. Exactly. It's the chill effect. It's the chill effect that we've seen in network after network in the United States. And now we're seeing it play out with the BBC in our own country, which, as Bregman says, ironically enough, is the subject of his lecture, the cowardice of political elites and not doing enough to defend democracy itself.

9:54Alison Phillips:You couldn't write it.

9:55Rory Stewart:You couldn't write it, particularly coming as it did after the appearance before the select committee and, you know, Samir Shah and Caroline Thompson and Sir Robbie talking about impartiality and toughness and how that kind of is the core of what the British Broadcasting Corporation is all about and about independence and able to say things that you see. And I always worried when I was at the BBC that sometimes impartiality would be used as an excuse to hide behind cowardice. Or as a tool to bludgeon you with. Yes. The 11th commandment, thou shalt not say anything too interesting, because if you say something too interesting or too provocative or too controversial, even though it may be self-evidently true, then you run the risk of, oh, God, that could cause us problems.

10:52Rory Stewart:Maybe if you could just tone it down a bit, maybe just dial that back. Maybe that would be a little bit risky.

10:57Alison Phillips:That self-denial order... Say, including the script, some might argue that rather than something is true that...

11:03Rory Stewart:And on the other hand, and only time will tell. All those sort of weaselly words that get put into scripts when you try to kind of blur the edges of what you're saying. Now, I'm not saying the BBC should be...

11:15Alison Phillips:Lewis, could you just ensure that fewer people might understand this script? If we could just make it a little bit more nebulous, then hopefully no one really will understand what you're saying. Exactly.

11:21Rory Stewart:And I'm not saying... I fully believe in the importance of public service broadcasting and the role that the BBC plays in our public life. I do not want journalists to be going on television and saying ludicrous things that cause legal difficulties. But this isn't a journalist. This isn't a news bulletin. This is the Reith Lecture where you have invited someone because of their distinguished work, the quality of their brain, the fascination of their ideas to deliver something that you hope is going to engage an audience. And you trust that person to be able to deliver it. And between him recording it on the 28th of October and then you get the furore over Donald Trump and the panorama edit and the threats of legal action, you get a BBC, which at the last minute.

12:09Rory Stewart:And again, it's a question of editing. You can't make this shit up. They've snipped out, you know, probably 10 seconds of what he was going to say and left him absolutely seething and so bitterly disappointed in the corporation.

12:26Alison Phillips:And the question he himself has said, I was told the decision came from the highest levels within the BBC. Well, the BBC have not said in their statement, we actually have asked them this this morning, who that was, which is clearly going to be an important question, something that BBC is going to have to justify, because they're going to say, and they have said, this is about legal advice. But if that's the case, I mean, and I have no reason to doubt that it is the case, the fact that that has happened is even more damaging for the BBC in terms of audience confidence, which really matters that this latest episode, this self-inflicted episode from this dossier, which contained something about, you know, a 10 second panorama edit that even the author of the dossier, Michael Prescott, admitted in the select committee yesterday that he watched the panorama.

13:14Alison Phillips:her army when it went out and he didn't even notice and even think that the edit was a problem at the time as a result of the self-imposed fiasco and obsession and neurosis about that you've got into a situation where the bbc is now censoring someone that they themselves have invited to deliver a lecture which touches on the themes of the trump presidency and so on And what does that do to the confidence of the audience that the BBC right now is reporting on the most important man in the world without fear or favour or fear of the consequence of litigation and legality? Frankly, the only conclusion you can come to is you can't have that full confidence because we're seeing it play out as we speak.

14:01Rory Stewart:Well, Lewis, let me give you another example. And this is anecdotal and I haven't spoken to anyone senior in the BBC. But you and I spent three hours of our lives yesterday watching the select committee hearing, which we thought we might speak more about today. But I think actually events have moved on since then. But I also consumed a vast amount of BBC News output to see how the BBC was reporting on the BBC. The BBC as an organisation likes nothing more than to be picking the fluff out of its own belly button and concentrating on its own. So much fluff there. There's so much fluff there. But one of the huge stories that broke yesterday was about the case against James Comey, the former FBI director, and Letitia James, the New York district attorney, being thrown out.

14:50Rory Stewart:It was a case that Donald Trump had demanded be brought. It was a case that Donald Trump wanted to see Comey put behind bars and Letitia James put behind bars. and because of the manner in which this all happened i won't go into the kind of the story itself but it's a bloody enormous story that it was you know the new york times putting it as donald trump's worst day in court ever because he wanted this so much and a judge said this is unlawful these cases are thrown out comey you're free to go letitia james you're free to go and it was a big rebuff where was it on the bbc i listened and i thought it's not there if i I'm still in my old job as the North America editor.

15:32Rory Stewart:I would have been on the phone to the editor of the six o 'clock news, the 10 o 'clock news to all the output and say, guys, this is a frigging enormous story. We've got to be doing this tonight. Where was it? Well, I'm not saying maybe there's a perfectly innocent explanation, but it seems like, well, maybe it's just a slightly problematic story because the conclusion was this is a crap day for Donald Trump. This is a humiliation.

15:56Alison Phillips:Well, I have a lot of sympathy for journalists at the BBC at the moment on both sides of the Atlantic trying to cover the Trump story, because quite frankly, how can you do so without fear at this present moment? Not only because of the legal problems, but clearly because of the obsessions we saw from certain people at the committee yesterday who are absolutely convinced without any real justification. I mean, they were repeatedly asked for evidence as to where this kind of, you know, systemic bias against Trump was coming from the BBC and on other matters. And basically it kind of boiled down to what we've just got a feeling.

16:23Alison Phillips:I mean, at no point did some of the people involved, they kept being asked and they all actually denied that there was an institutional problem. But they said there was a systemic problem or an incipient kind of systemic problem. Well, what's the difference? Like what on earth is the difference? And, you know, much of this was left untouched because, frankly, the committee did a poor job, as these committees often do, at actually kind of, you know, following a line of inquiry or following a line of logic. But there is absolutely no doubt, absolutely no doubt. and I think this is where the kind of two stories really intersect, is that, you know, one of the problems that the BBC has got itself into and some of the problems that the people at that committee, some of those people at that committee exhibited yesterday, is that they have a complete blind spot for their own prejudices and their own biases.

17:07Alison Phillips:Indeed, their obsession without much evidence that there are particular kind of systemic biases in certain directions at BBC is itself a bias and a prejudice. to which they do not actually attach much introspection of their own views, right? And the way that this links is this, is that, you know, we talked about on the show before, that, you know, I certainly felt as I was there and you could feel this sort of chill wind, that because there was this, there were certain people within the BBC at the top who were obsessed with the idea of left-wing bias, that the truth is, is that, you know, you could say almost do anything to the right and it not be a problem.

17:43Alison Phillips:Indeed, it was probably encouraged. Let's just imagine for a moment that this year's Reith lecturer had instead been, say, Morris Glassman, Lord Morris Glassman, a Labour peer, but someone who's on the sort of right of the Labour Party and a great sort of critic of kind of cultural politics on the left or identity politics. And he had a sort of four episode excoriation of identity politics and the politics of progressivism and how liberalism had failed. The BBC, they would have been patting themselves on the back for that right now. They'd have been saying fantastic. People like Robbie Gibb and the rest of them would have been saying brilliant.

18:12Alison Phillips:That's exactly the sort of thing that we need. And yet with this, there will partly because of the legal advice, but also I'm sure they would have felt it anyway. There has clearly been a worry and a concern about seeing seeming too anti-Trump and so on and so forth. So you see these two stories coming together. They themselves have a complete blind spot and they are incapable of of of attaching any introspection or self-scrutiny to their own beliefs. I mean, you had one of them, the guy, Michael Prescott, who wrote the, you know, dossier, describing himself as, oh, I'm just a centrist dad. As if, like, being a centrist dad means you're without politics.

18:46Alison Phillips:Oh, no, that's just, I don't have politics. I'm just a centrist dad. This is bullshit. This is nonsense. It's, you know, a guy who clearly... It's a description of where you stand politically. It's a description of where you stand politically. And quite frankly, the guy has clearly got actual, no real appreciation or understanding of BBC guidelines or impartiality, which I'm not surprised by, John, because he's never worked in the place. And I'm not surprised that therefore, you know, when he sat there going on about, oh, why wasn't there a programme on Kamala Harris? Because Kamala Harris hadn't tried to overthrow an election, right?

19:15Alison Phillips:Like, for God's sake, it's just a complete ersatz understanding of impartiality, accuracy. Exactly.

19:22Rory Stewart:And that is the problem, that you cannot have a situation where impartiality is on the one hand on the other. You know, there is no other hand. Kamala Harris was not behind the attempted insurrection of January the 6th, 2021. I mean, you know, I'm sure there are things in Kamala Harris's past that are worthy of exploration. But Donald Trump had been impeached twice. He had been found guilty in a court of law by his peers on 34 counts of misreporting his election expenses over the payment to a former porn star, Stormy Daniels. I mean, Kamala Harris hasn't got any of that in her background. it wouldn't be quite such an interesting documentary to do.

20:05Rory Stewart:It's like saying, you know, on the one hand, Russia invaded Ukraine unlawfully. On the other hand, on the other hand, what? And to find this kind of false equivalences or symmetry of guilt where they're all as bad as each other, you know, which was often a kind of fullback position, particularly during the war in Bosnia and the breakup of Yugoslavia. oh, the Bosnian Serbs, they're just as bad as the Bosnian Muslims. It wasn't like that. And yet that was the easy way out to meet the kind of ersatz, it's a very good word, the ersatz impartiality that people clung to.

20:43Alison Phillips:I mean, just on the committee itself, it is, I mean, it was a good moment. There were two things I really thought about it. One is that it was a good example of how UK select committees are becoming more like US ones in a sense that traditionally they've tended to be a lot more collaborative and a bit more bipartisan and sort of work in all slightly more. And they all still have politics and it's still a political event, but a little bit more judicious. They'd work together. Whereas I thought what you basically saw yesterday was on the culture war on full display, where you had sort of certain Labour members really going for the people involved and Conservative members basically saying, oh, tell us more about how you think, how terribly, terribly partial the BBC is and how left wing it is.

21:19Alison Phillips:You know, it was a bit like a US House hearing where you basically do pass the parcel and you hear completely sort of different narratives and different versions of events. And it reminded me about how generally bad UK select committees are at managing to prosecute almost any argument whatsoever. I mean, honestly, I mean, some of them could barely string a sentence together.

21:35Rory Stewart:Well, I'm afraid that was my take out of it. I mean, I watched and I was kind of thinking, follow up that question. That's obvious follow up. They haven't answered your question. Please go in there, you know, get them to say what they mean. And it didn't happen. And I just thought the kind of total lack of inquisitorial skill from the MPs in question. But actually last night, I thought Robbie Gibbs' position has been strengthened. I thought he absolutely ran rings. Ran rings around them. He was far too clever for all of them. The lulled Robbie. The lulled butter wouldn't melt. I thought Samir Shah walked out of it a bit better place than he was beforehand.