A billion-dollar battle is brewing between an American president with pronounced autocratic leanings and one of the most steadfast bastions of British democracy. On one side is Donald Trump, who remains obsessed with the memory of his attempted political-legal coup of January 6, 2021. On the other is the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), accused of manipulating a documentary about that very event. It is as if the man from Trump Tower were taking on the Tower of London in a civilizational clash spanning the Atlantic.
Since the early 20th century, Britain’s public broadcasting service, nicknamed the Beeb, has been a national institution, a piece of the country’s soul, and even more so, its memory: an audio-visual museum of the modern era’s darkest and brightest hours. The current conflict pits the Trumpist world, with its idols of wealth and power, against that of the BBC, a blend of seriousness, humor and British culture. In short, a bloc of monetized brutality versus a bastion of televised civilization. It is no small matter.
It began with a grave professional error by Auntie Beeb, another affectionate nickname for the BBC. In late October 2024, just days before the November election that saw Trump return to power, the flagship program of BBC News, Panorama, aired a documentary produced by an independent company titled Trump: A Second Chance?. The film revisited the events of January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters, still stung by the outgoing president’s defeat to Joe Biden, stormed the Capitol in Washington.
They sought to prevent Congress from certifying the Democrat’s victory. The Republican had called the rally, intent on overturning the election results. In the documentary, the excerpt from the speech delivered by the MAGA (Make America Great Again) leader was a spliced edit: It combined two separate moments of his address into a single sentence, creating the impression that he had issued an explicit call for violence. Even though the commentary was fair, the sentence as broadcast was a fabrication: Trump never actually said it.
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Fonte: Le Monde
