‘Trust has been lost’ – Reform UK pulls out of BBC doc | Politics | News
Reform UK has announced it will stop collaborating with the BBC on a documentary about the party, following outrage over how President Trump’s speech was edited. The Rise of Reform was to be presented by Laura Kuenssberg and published in January, but an internal party email says “trust has been lost”.
The BBC commissioned October Films to produce the documentary. The company was working on the Panorama program about Mr. Trump, which sparked international controversy and raised the possibility of the President hitting the broadcaster with a $1 billion lawsuit.
Ekim was not responsible for editing the speech, which brought together two episodes held almost an hour apart and was delivered by BBC staff.
The president told a crowd in Washington, DC, on January 6 that they would “march to the Capitol” and “applaud our brave senators, congressmen and women.” But the edited version showed the President telling her: “We’re going to march on the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we’ll fight. We’ll fight like hell.”
The Reform memo to party officials says the production company has been given “unprecedented levels of access to our councils, councilors and elected officials.”
But he adds: “It has since been revealed that this production company is the same company that was involved in the production of the Panorama documentary, to which clips of the President were included. Donald Trump Alleging that he incited riots in the United States.”
He adds: “We want to be clear that October Films have always acted in a professional manner and there has been no suggestion from us that they would maliciously misrepresent Reform UK. However, trust has been lost following the Panorama documentary and both the BBC and the production company will need to do a lot of hard work to regain that trust.”
BBC director general Tim Davie and news director Deborah Turness resigned after a memo from an adviser to the BBC’s broadcasting standards committee emerged accusing Panorama of “distorting the events of the day”.
The BBC declined to comment on Reform’s decision.
