A ex-adviser to the BBC today told MPs he penned a damning memo on impartiality because he saw ‘incipient problems’ that were ‘getting worse’.
Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, authored a dossier that raised claims of bias.
He faced questions from the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee this afternoon after the leak of his memo sparked a furious BBC row.
The document raised concerns that a Panorama episode included selective editing of a speech made by Donald Trump before disorder at the US Capitol in 2021.
The US President has since threatened to sue the BBC for up to $5billion, while two senior BBC bosses have quit the corporation.
Mr Prescott told MPs on Monday he did not know how his memo, which he shared with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and regulator Ofcom, had been leaked to a newspaper.
‘At the most fundamental level I wrote that memo, let me be clear, because I am a strong supporter of the BBC,’ he said.
‘The BBC employs talented professionals across all of its factual and non-factual programmes, and most people in this country, certainly myself included, might go as far as to say that they love the BBC.’
Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, authored a dossier that raised claims of bias.
The document raised concerns that a Panorama episode included selective editing of a speech made by Donald Trump before disorder at the US Capitol in 2021.
But Mr Prescott added: ‘What troubled me was that during my three years on the BBC standards committee, we kept seeing incipient problems which I thought were not being tackled properly, and indeed I thought the problems were getting worse.’
His memo highlighted concerns about the way clips of Mr Trump’s speech on January 6 2021 were spliced together to make it appear he had told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them to ‘fight like hell’.
Mr Trump threatened the BBC with a billion-dollar litigation after the report was made public while US regulator the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched an investigation.
Mr Prescott added: ‘There was no ideology at play, no party politics.
‘If you take the example of the US elections report that came before the committee, if it had found that had been Kamala Harris misrepresented, not Donald Trump, I would have acted in exactly the same way.’
He added: ‘I never envisaged events playing out in the way they did, I was hoping the concerns I had could and would be addressed privately in the first instance.’
Asked if he thinks the BBC is institutionally biased, he said: ‘No I don’t… I do not think it’s institutionally biased.
‘Let’s be very clear. Tons of stuff that that the BBC does is world class, both factual programming and non factual programming.’
Asked if he is biased, Mr Prescott told MPs: ‘It’s always a tough job, isn’t it? Spotting your own biases.
‘I mean, you know, when you read about these centrist dads, I think I’m a centrist dad. That would probably cover it.’
The former journalist spoke of ‘incipient problems’ in the BBC and added: ‘We were finding the odd problem here, the odd problem there.
‘And the crucial thing was, when I say odd problem here and there, every single thing we spotted, as per my memo, seemed to me to have systemic causes.
‘And the root of my disagreement and slight concern even today is that the BBC was not, and I hope they will change, treating these as having systemic causes.
‘There’s real work that needs to be done at the BBC.’
After the report, BBC chairman Samir Shah apologised on behalf of the BBC over an ‘error of judgment’ and accepted the editing of the 2024 documentary gave ‘the impression of a direct call for violent action’.
Despite the apology, Mr Trump said he would proceed with legal action for ‘anywhere between one billion dollars (£759.8 million) and five billion dollars (£3.79 billion)’.
BBC News reported that the broadcaster had set out five main arguments in a letter to Mr Trump’s legal team as to why it did not believe there was a basis for a defamation claim.
BBC director-general Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness resigned in the fallout from the report becoming public.
Mr Prescott told MPs Mr Davie did a ‘first-rate job’ as director-general but said he had a ‘blind spot’ toward editorial failings.
Asked if the Panorama episode, Trump: A Second Chance?, had tarnished Mr Trump’s reputation, Mr Prescott added: ‘Probably not’.
