What are the key claims made in the leaked internal BBC memo?

LONDON: The BBC’s director-general and head of news resigned on Sunday following mounting accusations of editorial bias at the British broadcaster, including in the editing of a speech by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The publicly funded broadcaster has faced growing scrutiny after the Daily Telegraph published details from a leaked internal memo by a former standards adviser. The report highlighted shortcomings in the BBC’s coverage of the Israel–Hamas conflict, transgender issues, and its handling of Trump’s remarks.

Key findings from the memo, which was written by Michael Prescott to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board, include:

TRUMP PROGRAMME

Prescott said that an edition of the BBC’s flagship Panorama show broadcast a week before the U.S. election, “Trump: A Second Chance?”, “seemed to be taking a distinctly anti-Trump stance”, noting that critics of Trump far outnumbered his supporters.

The programme spliced together two separate excerpts from one of Trump’s speeches, creating the impression that he was inciting the January 2021 Capitol Hill riot, he said.

Trump was shown telling his supporters that “we’re going to walk down to the Capitol” and that they would “fight like hell”, a comment he made in a different part of his speech. He had actually said his supporters would “cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women”.

ISRAEL-HAMAS COVERAGE

Prescott noted that several contributors to the BBC’s Arabic service had selectively covered stories critical of Israel.

On one occasion, the BBC’s main English-language news site published 19 separate articles about the hostages taken by Hamas on the day of the October 7 attack in 2023, while BBC Arabic published none. By contrast, every article critical of Israel that appeared on the BBC News website was also featured on BBC Arabic.

The memo also highlighted that while BBC Arabic often ran the same stories as the BBC’s English-language website, there were significant differences in tone, headlines, and emphasis, with coverage generally more critical of Israel.

Prescott also criticized the BBC for allegedly misreporting the proportion of Palestinian women and children killed by Israeli military actions, as well as for inaccurately portraying the likelihood of children facing starvation under Israel’s aid blockade.