Who Owns the Narrative? The BBC Crisis and the Global Dilemma of Truth and Fabrication

Almost overnight, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), long regarded as one of the world’s most credible and enduring news institutions, found itself under heavy fire. Its reputation for impartiality has been shaken by a media scandal whose reverberations extend far beyond the organisation itself. The network now stands accused of the “deliberate distortion of a speech by then former U.S. President Donald Trump.” Even with the resignations of Director-General Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness on Nov. 9 2025, the crisis is far from over. The controversy has erupted at an extraordinarily sensitive moment, as critical questions are being raised about the limits of media responsibility and the mechanisms by which credibility can still be assured.

Traditional news organisations, long considered the guardians of truth, now face fierce competition and unprecedented challenges from AI and the limitless evolution of digital platforms and media tools. Indeed, crises of credibility striking such established outlets as the BBC have a compounded effect precisely because they have long served as relatively safe havens for audiences seeking professionally curated and verified information, in stark contrast to the chaotic flood of unverified content circulating across social media.

This latest scandal and its implications will be explored in the following sections and present a striking illustration of the transformation underway in Western media. The press is no longer merely a monitor or transmitter of information; it has increasingly become an active participant in the battles of power and influence. Today, media institutions stand at a decisive crossroads: confronted by audiences who question everything they encounter and are fully aware that anything can be fabricated. In such a volatile environment, the key question is whether these institutions can ever regain public trust and respect. The erosion of journalistic ethics, perhaps a by-product of the overwhelming deluge of news and content on social networks, combined with technological developments that have far outpaced human oversight, has left the field teetering on the brink of losing control altogether.

The controversy began with a BBC documentary titled “Trump: A Second Chance,” aired on Oct. 24 2024, just two weeks before the U.S. presidential election. The programme revisited the events of Jan. 6 2021, the day Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

According to subsequent revelations, the documentary’s editors had deliberately manipulated the footage of Trump’s speech that day, deleting one part and splicing another to create the impression that he was urging his supporters to launch an assault on the Capitol. In the aired version, Trump appeared to tell the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. … We fight. We fight like hell.” However, the crucial line in which Trump called on his supporters to act “peacefully and patriotically” was omitted: “… to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

An analysis of the original speech shows that the time interval between the deleted segment and the inserted one exceeds 50 minutes, which rules out the possibility that it was an ordinary, non-directed editorial effort; that is, the speech was subjected to a deliberate change of context, and a non-existent link was created between the sentences by merging some parts and cutting others.

Concerns over this manipulation were raised in a memorandum written by Michael Prescott, the former external independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC), who had left his post the previous summer. The document, first published by The Telegraph, stated that the programme had made Trump “say things he never actually said” through a process of “cutting and pasting” footage, which constituted a material deception of viewers. Not only that, but the documentary also portrayed the situation as though members of the far-right group “Proud Boys” had drawn their motivation to march toward the U.S. Capitol from Trump’s speech, suggesting that their movement occurred after his remarks. In reality, however, the footage the programme used of the Proud Boys heading toward the Capitol had been recorded before Trump delivered his speech.

Prescott wrote: “It was completely misleading to edit the clip in the way Panorama aired it. The fact that Mr Trump did not explicitly exhort his supporters to go down and fight at Capitol Hill was one of the reasons no federal charges for incitement to riot were brought against him. He noted that the editors had removed the phrase “peacefully and patriotically” and replaced it with “We fight. We fight like hell,” raising serious questions about the ethics and limits of editorial manipulation in media content.

The foregoing incident raises numerous vital and pressing questions about the realities and challenges of contemporary media work. The following are among the most significant of these questions:

First: Who Owns the Narrative?

We now live in a world that no longer competes solely over wealth, land, oil, or weapons, but over the voice itself. The real struggle today revolves around who controls the narrative. Countless humanitarian crises have gone unnoticed, received no assistance, and whose victims have perished unheard, while other crises have mobilised the world into action simply because their voices were heard. Some causes have triumphed and others have dominated global attention solely because those who championed them succeeded in making their voices resonate.

The dilemma lies in the fact that such influence is often manufactured by capital. A relatively small group of financiers and sponsors determines which messages reach the public and which remain unheard. Even in the age of the internet and digital platforms, capital still governs through paid advertising, sponsorships, and financial incentives offered to influencers and content creators. Thus, whoever controls the voice today also controls influence, the power to steer events in their favour. In this respect, the equation remains unchanged: money and power continue to serve as the key instruments for visibility, reach, and the consolidation of alternative narratives.

Second: Does the Media Reflect Reality, or Create It?

The scandal comes at an exceptionally sensitive moment, as audiences across the globe struggle with an ever-deepening crisis in distinguishing truth from falsehood in the media. At a time when the world is preoccupied with questions about the impact of artificial intelligence on journalism and the limits of manipulation through deepfake technologies and AI-generated media, the BBC’s falsified editing of Trump’s speech has provoked questions that go far beyond the traditional one, “Is this report accurate?”, to a more fundamental question: “Did this event even take place at all?”

The traditional understanding of the media’s mission — to convey reality, mirror truth, bear witness to events, and act as a neutral entity capable of fair judgment and accurate reporting — has undergone a profound transformation. Increasingly, the media has moved from the role of observer to that of actor, and even “engineer of reality”, shaping events rather than merely reflecting them. In some cases, it has become a participant in the equation rather than a monitor of it, capable of creating crises that never existed, concealing real ones, mobilising public sentiment for specific causes, and silencing empathy toward others. Against this backdrop, the question of ethics emerges as a central and pressing challenge that demands serious reflection and collective responsibility. The current crisis underscores the need for practical, enforceable, and globally applicable ethical frameworks to monitor, analyse, and regulate such transformations in the media landscape.

Third: Where Is the Line Between Credibility and Bias?

In the era of social media, where many unqualified individuals have become sources of news and influence, audiences often turn to long-established media outlets such as the BBC, which are seen as accountable institutions with defined structures and transparent standards, unlike social platforms that operate with little oversight. Yet this incident raises not only questions about the credibility and reliability of such institutions, but also a far more unsettling one: Are we still capable of trusting any platform, and how do we decide whom to trust?

The politicisation of media, the influence of capital, and the pressure exerted by lobbying groups are not new phenomena. However, there has always been, or was presumed to be, a fine line between advocacy and fabrication. Those with political visions have the right to fund media outlets that promote their ideas and principles, particularly when those principles are grounded in human values they believe can contribute to societal progress and prosperity. But do they also have the right to adopt the principle that “the end justifies the means”?

In the BBC crisis, for instance, Trump’s supporters have gained a powerful argument and tangible proof to reinforce their long-standing narrative about the bias and unreliability of liberal media. The repercussions of this scandal have not only weakened the BBC’s credibility but also strengthened Trump’s claim that he is a victim of a “liberal conspiracy.” Its impact may well extend further, undermining public confidence in other liberal media institutions as well.

Fourth: Must the Journalist Always Join the Crowd?

Fabrication can sometimes stem not from malice, but from the desire to tell people what they want to hear, to present evidence and narratives that align with prevailing convictions, even when those convictions are demonstrably false. The inescapable truth, however, is that we are naturally inclined to believe whatever confirms our worldview. This is what psychology defines as confirmation bias: the tendency to favour information that reinforces existing beliefs. When continually nurtured, this bias becomes the seed of extremism, leading individuals to believe they alone possess the absolute truth. In such a state, they reject debate, refuse dialogue, and eventually dehumanise those who disagree.

True progress, by contrast, stems from openness to alternative perspectives, from the willingness to view the world through the lens of the “other.” This intellectual openness forms the essence of enlightened thought, cultivating societies that are tolerant, understanding, and capable of coexistence. Yet the persistent tendency of media to amplify division, to validate one viewpoint over another, and to arm every political faction with tools that glorify its ideology, even through distortion, manipulation, or inversion of truth, serves only to deepen polarisation and erode credibility at its very core.

Fifth: Who Is Responsible?

Editors and those involved in producing media content today live under tremendous pressure, pushing them into an intense pursuit of attracting vast numbers of views, because this has become the primary measure of evaluation. Achievement based solely on numbers represents a disastrous trend for assessing the success of media platforms on social media, in an age of unfair competition between platforms that produce content at almost no cost, content that is inaccurate, unedited, and created without professional effort, and professional outlets that invest substantial time and resources, yet achieve fewer views.

The question now is: Are the number of views and “likes” truly the real measure of success for those working in the media industry today? There is a pressing need to reconsider the criteria for evaluating content success, by establishing standards that are more realistic and ethical, standards that do not drive content creators into the abyss of chasing viewership at any cost, but instead place them before a conscious choice: between the quality, credibility, and professionalism of their content, and their ability to generate more engagement on social media platforms that glorify everything extreme and unconventional, seeking excitement at the expense of truth. Those working in media must be granted a margin of security that encourages them to pursue truth and content quality, rather than racing after the fleeting popularity of a particular idea, event, or incident —the so-called “trend.”

There is no doubt that these and other questions call for the adoption of a new global media ethics code — one capable of keeping pace with the accelerating transformations of our time. In the past, the media relied on humans as conveyors of reality, a process that could be monitored and regulated. Yet in the age of artificial intelligence, algorithms have become a hidden partner to humans in the editing, transmission, and even creation of content. At times, they choose what provokes emotion rather than understanding, prioritising what drives more views and “likes” over what truly informs or enlightens.

From this perspective, we can no longer speak only of human bias, but of an emerging “artificial media bias,” in which the machine itself becomes partial, generating and promoting a particular type of data or narrative. This calls for establishing strict guidelines for training AI models used in journalism, such as ChatGPT, DALL·E, Midjourney, and others, to ensure neutrality, prevent them from being programmed to favour one narrative over another, and avoid exaggeration, distortion, selectivity, manipulation, or misrepresentation. Media platforms must also be required to disclose when content has been produced or assisted by artificial intelligence. This, in turn, necessitates regular and continuous reviews of the algorithms used in media content creation.