The BBC has been plunged into its most serious credibility crisis in years after an internal memo accused senior editors of ignoring “systemic” editorial failures across flagship output. The dossier—written by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee—details claims of a Panorama segment that stitched together two distant lines from a Donald Trump speech, a Gaza news operation that minimised Israeli suffering while platforming Hamas denials, and headline “fact-checks” built on shaky or outdated data.
Prescott, a former Sunday Times political editor who advised the BBC until June, says warnings from the corporation’s own reviewers were brushed off, corrections dragged, and style guidance bent to suit campaign-friendly framings. His note, published by the Daily Telegraph, paints a picture of selective story choice, lax scrutiny of advocacy research, and a small LGBT+ desk allegedly acting as a gatekeeper to keep dissenting views off air—faults he says the executive treated as business as usual.
According to Prescott, one of the most egregious episodes involved Panorama’s pre-election special on Donald Trump. An internal review by senior adviser David Grossman found the documentary “heavily weighted” against Trump, with ten critics to a single supporter, and included an edited sequence of Trump’s 6 January 2021 speech that spliced comments spoken nearly 40 minutes apart—creating the impression he had urged supporters to “fight” as they marched on the Capitol. Prescott says management refused to accept editorial breaches and declined to broadcast a balancing investigation into Kamala Harris.
Grossman’s broader review of US election output found the BBC leaned heavily into themes pushed by the Harris campaign while overlooking voter priorities on jobs, the economy, and immigration. It highlighted excessive coverage of a rogue poll showing Harris ahead; the use of contested terminology such as “reproductive rights” without attribution; and weak scrutiny of Harris’s claims compared to Trump’s. The review found no BBC programme more critical of Harris than Trump over the campaign.
On race, Prescott spotlights BBC Verify’s flagship report alleging an “ethnic penalty” in car insurance—quietly removed months later after Grossman found it relied on outdated data and asserted causation without evidence. A separate TUC-based report claiming a 132% rise in insecure jobs among ethnic minorities was later amended following complaints. Grossman warned of a recurring correlation–causation problem and a worrying willingness to foreground advocacy-group data. An internal review of mobile push alerts also found striking under-reporting of immigration stories, even during record Channel crossings.
The memo details claims of effective censorship on the trans debate by the corporation’s LGBTQ desk, which Prescott says blocked requests to cover stories critical of gender self-ID and medical treatment. Grossman’s 2024 review found “unintended editorial bias,” noted an absence of detransitioner voices, over-attention to drag-related features, and frequent language that treated “gender identity” as uncontested fact. He recommended clearer guidance anchoring stories in biological sex—a revision that Prescott says has yet to be actioned.
The dossier devotes its longest section to war reporting, alleging that BBC Arabic diverged sharply from the English-language site in story selection and tone during the Israel–Hamas conflict. While BBC News published 19 stories about hostages taken on 7 October, BBC Arabic ran none. By contrast, nearly all English-language articles critical of Israel were replicated on Arabic output, but critical reporting on Hamas was absent. Examples include a BBC Arabic headline on a Yazidi sex-slave’s rescue framed around a 582-word Hamas denial; the Jaffa terror attack described as a “military operation” with no victim details; and the Majdal Shams rocket strike, which killed nine children, reported with prominent Hezbollah denials and no nearby-target context included in English coverage.
Prescott also cites the airing of Gaza casualty breakdowns later revised by the UN; mass-grave stories relying on Hamas-controlled sources; and a Newsnight segment that repeated an inaccurate claim about 14,000 children starving to death within 48 hours. Another internal review found widespread BBC references to the International Court of Justice finding a “plausible case of genocide”—a characterisation the court’s former president later said was wrong.
The revelations have triggered sweeping political blowback. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has called for “heads to roll”; Donald Trump Jr accused BBC reporters of dishonesty; and Israel’s deputy foreign minister has demanded director-general Tim Davie resign. Ofcom chair Lord Grade has asked BBC chairman Samir Shah to investigate the claims “thoroughly”, and Prescott will give evidence to MPs next week.
Prescott concludes that executive defensiveness—particularly among senior news leaders—has become “a systemic problem in itself”, urging the board to intervene and restore impartiality and public trust.
“On no other occasion in my professional life have I witnessed what I did at the BBC,” he warns.
