The day before yesterday I wrote, “Remember the names of those public figures, especially journalists, who say that this was acceptable behaviour by the BBC because it was done to Trump. These people think lying is acceptable. Assume they are lying to you; assume they would lie about you.”
One example is Adam Boulton. He is the former political editor of Sky News, among many other prestigious roles, and currently presents on Times Radio. Regular readers may recall that in 2023 he told BBC Newsnight that GB News should be shut down in order to protect the UK’s “delicate and important broadcast ecology”. Boulton’s response to the crisis at the BBC was this tweet:
Adam Boulton
@adamboultonTABB
For the record No words were put into Trump’s mouth. The quotes were him saying what he said.9:36 AM · Nov 9, 2025
(Hat tip to the science fiction author Neal Asher.)
People in the replies to Boulton’s tweet have a lot of fun snipping out parts of what he said in order to reverse its meaning. But it is not really that funny. Leading journalist Adam Boulton thinks deliberate, carefully engineered selective quotation is an acceptable journalistic practice. Leading journalist Adam Boulton thinks lying is acceptable. Assume Adam Boulton is lying to you; assume Adam Boulton would lie about you.
Another journalist whose own words demonstrate that he thinks it is fine to use selective quotation to lie to his readers is Mikey Smith, Deputy Political Editor of the Mirror. Back in the days when he was Michael Smith, Mikey worked for Sky News and the BBC. On November 9th, he tweeted this:
Mikey Smith
@mikeysmithIt’s not an assault on the BBC. It’s an assault on facts.
The edit was only remotely a problem if your position is that Trump played no part whatsoever in encouraging January 6th. Which he plainly and obviously did.
7:37 PM · Nov 9, 2025
Leading journalist Mikey Smith thinks deliberate, carefully engineered selective quotation is an acceptable journalistic practice. Leading journalist Mikey Smith thinks lying is acceptable. Assume Mikey Smith is lying to you; assume Mikey Smith would lie about you.
Still, perhaps I was a little harsh about journalists in general in my earlier post. Sure, there are plenty of outright liars in the media, and plenty of people who upvote their lies and beg to be lied to some more. But perhaps a larger group is made up of caring, intelligent people who you’d probably really like if you met socially, in the unlikely event that you were invited to one of their social gatherings.
People like Jane Martinson. She is a Guardian columnist, a professor of financial journalism at City St George’s and a member of the board of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian Media Group. On November 9th she wrote this piece for the Guardian: “The BBC is facing a coordinated, politically motivated attack. With these resignations, it has given in”
Now the resignations of both Davie and the CEO of BBC News, Deborah Turness, have shown that baying for blood gets results.
The biggest shock is that this saga began just a week ago with the leak of a 19-page “devastating memo” from Michael Prescott, a former political journalist who spent three years as an external adviser to the broadcaster, published in the Telegraph. The dossier alleges BBC Panorama doctored a speech by Trump, making him appear to support the January 6 rioters, that its Arabic coverage privileged pro-Hamas views, and that a group of LGBTQ employees had excessive influence on coverage of sex and gender.
I admire in a technical sense the way that Professor Martinson uses the word “alleges”. The claims that the BBC’s Arabic coverage privileged pro-Hamas views and that a group of LGBTQ employees had excessive influence on coverage of sex and gender can be fairly called allegations. Even if one thinks these two allegations are probably true, as I do, whether the behaviour of groups of journalists over a period of years was fair or unfair is not a matter that can be assessed quickly at a distance. Two of the three items in Professor Hutchinson’s list of things that she says the dossier “alleges” truly are allegations, i.e. claims that remain to be proved. The first one is the cuckoo in the nest. Professor Martinson also categorises it as an “allegation” that Panorama misleadingly edited Trump’s speech. If she had wanted to, she could have verified the allegation as fact by watching a twenty-three second video. That particular clip was from news.com.au, but it is widely available. (I suppose we could enter a spiral of distrust and say that maybe that video was faked like the Panorama one, but that would involve admitting the Panorama one was faked, so this option is not available to Professor Martinson.)
Now, Prof. Martinson might complain that it is unfair to focus on that little evasion when later in the article she did go on to say,
None of this is to say that the BBC has not made mistakes. At the very least, the Panorama documentary appears to have included a bad and misleading edit of an hour-long Trump speech, which is unacceptable even if that speech was subsequently found to have encouraged insurrection.
But if she did so complain about relevant material being downplayed, I wouldn’t have to go to ChatGPT to find a smoothly written defence of the practice. Notice how even in the act of admitting that the Panorama edit was “bad and misleading”, she still puts in a little doubt that it actually happened. She writes, “the Panorama documentary appears to have included a bad and misleading edit“. “Appears to” – can we get BBC Verify onto that? It might be that Jane Hutchinson wrote “appears to” here and “alleges” earlier as part of a subtle attempt to cast doubt on politically inconvenient facts that she knew were true but would prefer her readers to doubt. However I think it more likely that it was a mere reflex; an involuntary flinching of the eyes and mind away from the thought that a situation could exist where Trump – Trump! – was the one being lied about and people like her were the liars, and, more embarrassing yet, that she and people like her might be the ones being lied to. And that this might have been going on for years, and she, a Professor of Financial Journalism, had not noticed.
Let us finish this discussion with a short prayer for Guardian journalists and those who love them:
“Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.”
– Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
None of this is to say that the BBC has not made mistakes.
Not a mistake, though. Entirely deliberate.
The mistake was getting caught at it. Though it’s an understandable mistake. How could they have expected the “mistake” to be widely reported, such that the doctoring of the quote came to light, other than in the unread organs of the “far right.” After all it’s taken A WHOLE YEAR for it to make the news. They were nearly right that they could doctor the quote and get away with it.
But, but they have got away with so much else in the past. Think Jimmy Saville. Think the Police raid on Cliff Richard. They thought they could get away with it this time too, and they may still do so. Unless people remind them repeatedly.
The people who “encouraged” January 6th in the sense of entering the Capitol Building, were Mr Ray Epps and other servants of the government.
And then there is the “little” matter of the “pipe bomb” left outside the Democratic National Committee building – who really put it there and who ordered them to put it there.
If Adam Boulton, Mickey Smith and Jane Mastinson (by the way – there should be no such thing as a “Professor of Journalism” – or “Schools of Journalism”) were real journalists they would be interested in finding out the truth – no matter where it led, whether about January 6th 2021, or the rigged (wildly rigged) Presidential Election of 2020 – but they are NOT real journalists, they are establishment people who only care about their “Progressive” agenda – to crush ordinary people, supposedly “for our own good”.
The truth means nothing to them – only their agenda of power and control means anything to them.
I’m not sure whether this is an example of “journalists who lie” or “journalists who prefer not to think”, but it’s certainly an example of being in a bubble – at the end of lengthy tweet, Nick Robinson, currently presenter of Radio 4’s flagship Today programme says,
!
This reply put it better than I could:
I would also like to flag up someone who DID notice the dishonest splicing at the time, and told the BBC about it too.
This tweet from someone called simply “Paul”, @PabloSt981, was made on October 29th 2024:
As you can see, Paul tagged the BBC, BBCWorld and Ofcom.
There may have been other examples. I do not know whether the dossier itself, the one that was leaked to the Telegraph, got the story about the splicing of Trump’s speech from an external source or whether the writers spotted it themselves.
You left out half of the Douglas Adams quote. Arguably, ignoring the second prayer is what got everybody into trouble.
“There’s another prayer that goes with it that’s very Important,” continued the old man, “so you’d better jot this down, too, just in case. You can never be too sure. “Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer. Amen.” And that’s it. Most of the trouble people get into in life comes from missing out that last part.”
druid144, I felt the short version of the prayer was a snappier way to finish off a post about journalists living in a bubble, but the full version is in the link to “Goodreads” that I posted.
Bonus points if you can spot the other (slightly altered) HHGG reference in the post.
It would be fun to know how many words were chopped out between the first bit of the doctored quote and the second. At a standard 150 wpm 54 minutes represents about 8,000 words. But Trump speaks quite slowly and there’d be pauses for punch lines and applause. Even so that’s probably still 5,000 words.
Honest mistake, guv.
Natalie Solent (Essex) November 11, 2025 at 5:50 pm. “Bonus points if you can spot the other (slightly altered) HHGG reference in the post.”
The particular phrase that was quickly followed by Zaphod saying that he preferred it when they were shooting.
The edit was only remotely a problem if your position is that Trump played no part whatsoever in encouraging January 6th. Which he plainly and obviously did.
Trouble is, the only evidence for Trump’s encouragement of the Jan 6 protests is him advocating peaceful protest. The evidence for him advocating violence is ….. made up.
I read that as “it was only a lie if you believe it was a lie.”
“2 + 2 = 5” is only a problem if you don’t believe it yet.
Bobby,
I had wondered how a case filed in the USA, presumably Florida in order to fall within their 2-year statute of limitations, might be enforced on a non-US organisation.
Would you agree with BlackBelt and his opinion on the relevance of the principal of reciprocity?
If, and I do not know for sure, this episode of Panorama was aired on BBC America at or around the time of the original broadcast date (and why would a current affairs programme do otherwise?) it would be hard to deny it was anything other than a deliberate attempt by a foreign entity to influence the outcome of the 2024 election.
https://youtu.be/ubgUjOyxkQo?si=l02SkE9BiF06uced
It is worth pointing out that with AI video tools you can make a video of anybody saying just about anything in a convincing way.
Broadly speaking this works by taking samples of what they actually said (and what they actually looked like saying it) and rearranging those in a different order.
So, if chopping up a Trump speech is ok, is valid journalism, then that video of Trump explaining that he is a visitor from Mars who has come to send all the black people to the gas chambers is just as good quality journalism. Just a bit more high tech.
Many journalists will, possibly in a single conversation, have used 1) the first person pronoun 2) a word commonly used to express liking something and 3) the surname of a failed Austrian painter.
Stitching them all together into a single quote must surely be acceptable by these standards.
Paul:
I am reading that the “pipe bomber” has been identified as one Shauni Kerkhoff, a former member of the Capitol Police, who has since transferred to a job with the CIA. Apparently analysis of her gait implies a 94% match. I do not know how reliable this is, or if it is admissible in court. Her career certainly seems to have been on an upward trajectory.
Whether anything comes of this depends on whether the CIA is subject to the same laws as everyone else, so it is not a given. But surely anyone who does not by now realise that the January 6th “insurrection” was a Deep State operation can only be brain dead or a BBC journalist, inasmuch as there is any distinction.
Sort of. I’ve not heard it expressed as his “mirror image” idea. More like, you can enforce a judgment across the ocean – per common law agreements – when the judgment doesn’t actually go against the principles of the law of the second jurisdiction.
That’s where the differences in defamation law come into play here. Since we in the US have the constitutional guarantee of free speech and the UK doesn’t, we get to enforce our judgment over in the UK even when the UK can’t enforce its judgments here.
But, basically, you sue the UK-entity in Florida, get a judgment – an actual piece of paper issued by the court – and take it to the UK court and start a second lawsuit there – a contract-enforcement lawsuit, with the written judgment standing in for a contract. Easy stuff.
JohnK – the CIA is covered by the laws, indeed there are laws on top of the normal laws against the Agency operating inside the United States.
And, I suspect, the new Director of the CIA would be very interested in talking to the lady you mention.
I hope the lady does not “commit suicide” or “have an accident” before both the new leadership of the CIA and the FBI get to talk to her.
By the way – I knew the lady worked for the Capital Police (I have known that for some years) – but I did NOT know the lady had transferred to the Agency (an unusual move).
And, please note everyone, the “mainstream media” is still not interested – not in the rigged election of 2020, not in the False Flag operation known as January 6th, not interested in anything – but then they are not paid to find the truth, indeed they would lose their pay and pensions if they did seek the truth about certain subjects.
They do not even care about their own – for example when a BBC journalist died from the Covid “vaccine” she became a “non person” (it was as if the lady had never existed) and the the media carried on pushing the (highly dangerous) injections.
And when Kari Lake, a lifelong journalist, was cheated (blatantly cheated) in the 2022 election for Governor of Arizona, the media (including the Wall Street Journal) rushed to…… rushed to COVER IT UP – to deny everything.
Paul:
The CIA is indeed covered by the law, in theory. Actually enforcing those laws against the CIA is another matter entirely. I don’t think a search warrant would get you into Langley.
JohnK – it depends who you came with, the 101st Airborne Division would have no problem getting into the Langley.
Also there is now the fact that the Director of the Agency is a conservative – a real one.
So the question arises for CIA employees engaged in subversive operations – “who are you serving?”
You are not serving the Director – because he is against what you are doing. You are not serving the President – because your operations are directed against him. And you are not serving the American people – because most of them, in spite of all your lying propaganda and psyops, voted for President Trump.
So who are you serving? Where does your authority come from?
There is no good answer to this question – so these would be “Guardians” (Plato type Guardians – who believe that they are an intellectual elite who have the right to rule the people and tear up the Constitution of the United States) need to be treated as the terrorists they really are – they seek to use terror to subvert the United States and overthrow the elected constitutional government, so they are terrorists.
“But I went to Yale and come from a good family!” – irrelevant.