BBC Cuts Trump ‘Corruption’ Line From Prestigious Reith Lecture After Legal Advice
The BBC has cut a line from this year’s prestigious Reith Lecture in which left wing Dutch historian Rutger Bregman called Donald Trump “the most openly corrupt president in American history.”
Bregman claimed on social media that the decision came “from the highest levels within the BBC.”
The BBC said the corporation had “made the decision to remove one sentence from the lecture on legal advice.”
But apparently we’re all living in Orwell’s Airstrip One because a left-wing historian can’t just libel a U.S. president on the state broadcaster?
The Reith Lectures are the BBC’s flagship intellectual showcase and have been going on since 1948.
Previous lecturers include Stephen Hawking, Hilary Mantel, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Bertrand Russell and even King Charles III back when he was Prince Charles. These are supposed to be the prestige lectures.
Think what you like about Trump, but what does “most openly corrupt” even mean? More than Bush/Cheney and the Halliburton dealings? More than Joe Biden’s pre-emptive pardons?
The BBC is supposed to have rules about impartiality, it’s not meant to be a giant state-funded BuzzFeed that says whatever it wants.
Bregman is an interesting author, who identifies with the left-libertarian tradition and shot to fame at Davos for lecturing billionaires on tax avoidance. He has even written for the WEF pushing universal basic income.
But now he’s accusing the BBC of censorship because his lines (read them here) didn’t make it past the legal department.
The outrage has come shortly after the Panorama debacle after which the BBC forced to admit it had broadcast a cut that made Trump look worse than he actually was on January 6. Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for damages up to $1bn.
The left wing Prospect magazine defended the Panorama edit, with a Pulitzer-winning editor insisting an editing mistake isn’t proof of bias.
“Making an editing mistake is not a capital offence, nor proof of putting your thumb on the scale,” said acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning American editor Lowell Bergman.
Yet suddenly cutting a line out on legal advice is authoritarianism?