The BBC’s fight with Trump couldn’t have come at a worse time 

LONDON — Britain’s public service broadcaster is in the fight of its life. A blazing row with Donald Trump just made everything harder. 

The U.S. president on Monday threatened legal action against the BBC, just hours after two of its top executives resigned over claims of bias in the state-funded corporation’s news coverage. 

The dispute — which has been seized on by figures on the British political right as well as Trump and his allies — comes as BBC bosses prepare to embark on a fraught round of negotiations with ministers over the rules it must abide by and, crucially, how it is funded. The outcome will determine whether the storied British broadcaster, once the voice of an empire, survives in anything like its current form.

Opposition politicians wasted no time defining the terms of battle.

 “Just getting rid of two members of staff does not eradicate the cultural problems that lie deep within the BBC and have for many, many decades,” Nigel Farage, a Trump ally who leads Britain’s poll-topping Reform UK party — and could well become the country’s next prime minister — told a press conference Monday as supporters cheered on. 

In his sights too: an overhaul of the BBC’s decades-old funding model, which depends on an annual fee paid by individual households.  

 “This isn’t about Trump. Trump’s just the final straw of what we’ve seen over the course of the last weeks, months, and indeed, decades,” said Farage. 

The crisis has left Britain’s liberals stuck in the middle. In a letter sent to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Reform’s Nigel Farage today, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey called for British politicians to defend the BBC, warning: “The BBC belongs to Britain, not Trump.” 

‘Error of judgement’ 

The latest BBC crisis was triggered last week when the Telegraph newspaper published a memo written by Michael Prescott, the BBC’s former standards adviser, covering a range of alleged failings in its content. That included its coverage of transgender issues, the war in Gaza, and Trump’s presidency. 

The most damning claim was that footage in the Panorama show had been selectively edited to suggest, incorrectly, that the U.S. president had told supporters in January 2021: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”  

The words were, in fact, spliced from sections of the speech almost an hour apart, and omitted a section in which Trump had said he wanted supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” 

The U.S. president on Monday threatened legal action against the BBC. | Allison Robbert/AFP via Getty Images

The BBC has long weathered accusations from all political sides that it is not adhering to its governing charter, which says it must avoid “favoring one side over another,” but on Monday, BBC Chairman Samir Shah issued a mea culpa and publicly apologized for the “error of judgement.” 

Follow the money

Under the BBC’s Royal Charter agreement, the broadcaster is funded through a license fee, which requires any household that watches or records TV, or streams BBC iPlayer, to pay.  

The current Charter began in 2017 and runs to 31 December 2027. Negotiations are in the early stages, but people familiar with discussions say questions of funding will dominate at a time when ministers have raised taxes.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, who is spearheading the Charter renewal, said in January she is thinking “quite radically” about alternatives to the license fee, and not ruling out a subscription model.  

Farage — a long-time critic of the BBC license fee  — said that if the BBC didn’t “get a grip” there would be many, many millions “refusing” to pay.  

Farage himself has skin in the commercial broadcasting game as a star presenter of the right-leaning GB News. In a post on X, Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt gave the upstart channel a plug, saying: “.@BBCNews is dying because they are anti-Trump Fake News. Everyone should watch @GBNEWS!”

Conservative Shadow Culture Secretary Nigel Huddleston warned: “The BBC needs to pay close attention to why it is that increasing numbers of people do not want to pay the license, because they don’t see it as value for money, or they disagree with the content.”  

But John Whittingdale, the former Conservative culture secretary who was involved in the last set of Charter negotiations, warned funding was a “wholly separate debate.” 

“The issue of how you pay for the BBC has to be kept entirely separate from issues around editorial because the independence of the BBC is still a very important principle.” 

No. 10 has sought to play down the row, insisting it does not believe the BBC is institutionally biased, pointing to its “vital role” in an age of disinformation. 

Both the right-wing Conservatives and Reform insist they have no desire to destroy the BBC. 

“There is a future for the BBC, because it does have a strong global brand, but in order to retain its trust and confidence, it’s got to respect its impartial charter responsibilities and make sure that the news and current affairs programming abides by its own editorial guidelines,” Huddleston said Monday.  

Soft power 

One of the central arguments the BBC’s advocates make in favor of funding the broadcaster is the soft power role it plays through initiatives such as the BBC World Service, which delivers news in over 40 languages.  However, it has cut jobs this year as the BBC has sought to find savings.  

Conservative MP Julian Smith said it was unfortunate that BBC leadership teams had been focused on domestic scandals and editorial and corporate issues that should have been addressed with much greater speed, rigour, political confidence, and understanding.  

“That’s been at the loss of focus on how to maximise, and also where needed make a case, to government on the global reach of the BBC, and the impact this could have on foreign soft power,” he said.

Whittingdale insisted “we need the BBC,” describing it as “an extraordinarily fine broadcaster.”

“Its reputation is one of its greatest assets, and that is why this is so damaging,” he said.
“I want the BBC to be seen, still to be seen as a sort of beacon of truth and reliability, and that is undermined by these kinds of revelations.”

Emilio Casalicchio contributed reporting