Russia attacked the BBC over the scandal involving its editing of video clips that were 54 minutes apart showing President Donald Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, so it misleadingly appeared he had encouraged his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol.
“They are beyond reproach,” Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, told her country’s state-run TASS news agency, originally in Russian.
Zakharova also accused the BBC, Britain’s public broadcaster, of “falsification” in its reporting of the 2022 Bucha massacre by Russian troops in Ukraine.
Newsweek has contacted the BBC Press Office for comment via email.
The scandal is the latest vindication of Trump in his campaign against the media, which he and his allies accuse of persistent bias against him, and has seen the president file multiple lawsuits against major networks and broadcasters.
It also adds fuel to Russia’s attempts to undermine public trust in the media, right as Western allies accuse the Kremlin of peddling damaging disinformation in their societies.
Russia Draws Bucha Massacre Comparison
Two senior leaders at the BBC—its Director General Tim Davie and CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness—resigned amid the backlash over its handling of the documentary concerned.
The BBC’s “Panorama” documentary program, aired in October 2024, spliced together two sections of the speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.”
Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
“The falsification in Bucha was likewise ‘edited,’ or rather, informationally fabricated, precisely by the BBC,” Zakharova claimed, accusing the institution of having “invented incredible stories” and “inflated absurd disinformation” in other coverage of Russia.
The BBC published satellite imagery in April 2022 taken a month before that showed corpses lying in Bucha’s streets while it was under the control of Russian forces. The BBC found that some of the bodies had their hands tied behind their backs, which suggests executions rather than incidental battlefield deaths.
Ukrainian authorities, including local officials in Bucha, said that hundreds of civilians were killed during the Russian occupation of the town. Ukraine said many of those killed were shot, some with their hands tied, and that the killings amount to war crimes.
The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that the images and footage of deaths in Bucha were a “staged provocation” by Ukraine and its Western backers. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the situation in Bucha as a “fake attack” orchestrated by the West.
Russia claims its forces left Bucha before the bodies appeared on the streets, and thus argues they cannot be responsible.
BBC Trump Editing Scandal
Pressure on the BBC’s top executives has been growing since the British Daily Telegraph newspaper published parts of a dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, who had been hired to advise the BBC on standards and guidelines. The BBC has strict rules of impartiality in its editorial guidelines that it must uphold.
As well as the Trump edit, it criticized the BBC’s coverage of transgender issues and raised concerns of anti-Israel bias in the BBC’s Arabic service.
The “Panorama” episode showed an edited clip from the January 2021 speech in which Trump claimed the 2020 presidential election had been rigged. Trump is shown saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
According to video and a transcript from Trump’s comments that day, he said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Trump used the “fight like hell” phrase toward the end of his speech, but without referencing the Capitol.
“We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said.
Donald Trump Reacts to BBC News Resignations
Trump thanked The Telegraph in a Truth Social post on Sunday for “exposing these Corrupt ‘Journalists'” after the BBC resignations.
“These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election,” Trump said.
“On top of everything else, they are from a Foreign Country, one that many consider our Number One Ally. What a terrible thing for Democracy!”
This article includes reporting by The Associated Press.
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