The BBC has now been found to have misled the public on two of the most emotionally charged subjects of our time: Gaza and Trump.
These are not comparable in scale or consequence. One involves unimaginable human suffering, the other a turning point that exposed how politics, media, and public trust became dangerously entangled. But they share a single truth.
When the media manipulates context, selectively edits, or conceals crucial facts, it betrays public trust and undermines the very fabric of society. When national institutions spread or enable falsehoods, they divide, destabilise and damage democracy.
In July, the BBC's Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone was ruled 'materially misleading' by Ofcom after it failed to disclose that the child narrator's father held a ministerial role within Gaza's Hamas run administration, a grave breach of transparency that warped the audience's understanding.
Just months later, a leaked 19 page memo revealed that BBC Panorama had spliced two separate parts of Donald Trump's 6 January speech, almost an hour apart, to make it appear that his call to "fight like hell" directly followed his direction for supporters to march on the Capitol, omitting his earlier words urging them to protest "peacefully and patriotically."
In addition, this week the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit has upheld complaints against presenter Martine Croxall for correcting "pregnant people" to "women" on air and rolling her eyes, judged to be a breach of impartiality rules because the facial expression "laid it open to the interpretation that it indicated a particular viewpoint".
The same Executive Complaints Unit that leapt into action over an eye roll stands in clear contrast to my own experience dealing with the BBC’s wider complaints system.
Over 13 months, my evidence based submission, detailed, factual and supported by documentation, was passed from department to department, never properly addressed and never resolved. The responses I received bore little resemblance to the points I raised. They obfuscated, deflected and left me wondering whether I was witnessing staggering incompetence or something more deliberate.
These can't be accidental lapses. They are editorial decisions made in full awareness of how powerful the subjects are, and how easily emotion can override the truth.
The BBC knew the weight of both narratives, but still chose narrative over accuracy. This is more evidence of a dereliction of its public duty and a dangerous precedent for democracy itself.
For those paying attention, we knew this was happening, though perhaps not to the extent it was or still is. I still know people who rely on the BBC as a trusted news source, believing its content is fact checked, verified, and impartial. It is none of those things.
It doesn't matter where you sit politically, left, right, or anywhere in between. This should concern everyone.
When a public broadcaster, paid for by the public under threat of penalty, stops informing and starts editing reality, it no longer serves democracy. It undermines it.
