BBC’s Trump Edit – Mistake or Malice?

Farzana Baduel (00:07): Well, hello. Hello everybody, and happy Friday to you all. Welcome to the Week Unspin, a weekly live look at the world through the eyes of PR professionals from around the world. My name is Farzana Baduel and I am in London.

David Gallagher (00:22): I'm David Gallagher, I'm also in London.

Doug Downs (00:24): And I'm Doug Downs in Canada's Rocky Mountains.

Farzana Baduel (00:27): Now we have an interloper who's joined us. May we present the wonderful Adrian Monck. He is one of our favourite news observers. Adrian, where are you joining us from today?

Adrian Monck (00:39): I'm joining you from the lovely mountains of Geneva.

Farzana Baduel(00:43): Now, for those who do not know about Adrian, he is a rockstar. Now whilst at the World Economic Forum, he transformed it from a close rather introverted organisation into a global digital powerhouse. He was a founder of Britain's Five News and he publishes the Seven Things newsletter on LinkedIn and Substack that I highly recommend and we're delighted to have you with us. So for Adrian and the others who may be joining us for the first time, here's how this conversation works. We each pull up a story from the global headlines and then we chat about what it means from a comms perspective, what techniques or strategies are involved and are there any lessons to be learned and what our colleagues in PR are thinking about. Now, here's a line up. Number one. Of course, it's going to be number one. The BBC have gotten themselves into a bit of a situation. Number two, the US government is reopening after the longest shutdown in history. And three, my story, a rumoured exit tax that has at least one rich young British entrepreneur headed to the sunny climes of Dubai. And of course, we always welcome comments and questions from the live chat, so please do comment away. But let's start with the BBC. What on earth is going on?

David Gallagher (02:02): Yeah, I think this, well, if it wasn't mine, it might have been Doug's. And just for a little bit of context and how we operate on Sunday afternoon, I heard about some of the resignations, we'll get into this in a moment, top posts at the BBC for an editing decision they made, and we'll get into that in a moment. But within our little programme, Doug was texting me on Sunday saying, I think this is the story for next week. And that's a little early for us. A lot of things can happen during the week, but it was pretty clear just watching my own text chats blow up that this was something big and it was bigger than just the UK as well. So just to frame this for you, the BBC produces a programme called Panorama. If you are in the US it's kind of similar to 60 Minutes.

(02:44): It's an investigative news show and they were looking at the January sixth insurrection, I would call it, but a kind of closer profile on some of the people who participated in it. And within the segment, they made a decision to condense some sound bites from a speech that President Trump made and they cut out pretty much a lot of it in the middle to make it sound like he was playing a more direct role in urging what ended up happening in the Capitol later that day. I think it's a bigger story than just the editing question, but maybe to give you a little bit of insight, David, if you could just play the clip and then Adrian, I want to come to you for a little bit of perspective.

President Donald Trump (03:24): Down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you. And we fight, we fight like hell. We're going to walk down to the Capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.

David Gallagher (03:44): That was the editing decision. And Adrian, I know you had written something I think the Monday after this and I thought we got to get you on the show to talk a little bit about it for perspective. So is it a big deal? Can you give us a little bit of context? What was your reaction? And then I know Doug's aching to go too, so we'll go to Doug for a reaction to your reaction first. But what's your take?

Adrian Monck (04:06): This is a long backstory about why the BBC is in the frame and it's like all good stories, tons of internal politics, fear, loathing, hatred, all those kinds of things that news organisations bottle up inside. But the error is an error. They should not have fast forwarded 50 minutes of Donald Trump's speech to splice together two pieces of it to make it sound like the guy was giving a far more aggressive public statement than he was actually making. And that's a basic mistake. Now, I think it speaks to a couple of things within the BBC's culture. This was made by an outsourced film unit, there were probably one, two layers of bureaucracy above that and then maybe two more above those guys. So you're talking about a big creaky organisation which is producing stuff using part time freelance folks to put stuff together and they screwed up.

(05:11): Simple as that. Why has it led to the resignations that it's led to? How do you naturally see this unfolding? You would see it as whoever made the show needs a damn good slap on the wrist and some kind of strict telling off straight to the headmaster's study. Their boss probably needs telling off or firing or whatever the penalty is. How does this end up causing resignation to Director General and the Head of News? How does that happen? Because these people are way, way, way further down the list. And this really is not Jimmy Savile. This is not one of the kind of great crimes of BBC journalism. It's a mistake. So I think then you can go into the whole backstory of it, which may or may not have made it across the Atlantic, but it's a treachery executive hatred, bad governance, and also a massive right wing campaign in the British media, notably the Daily Telegraph, which hates the BBC with a passion and is willing to throw it under the bus. So it's essentially you've got these two people resigning for what is a bad mistake, but not a mistake that probably should have led to their resignations. It should have been people further beyond the food chain because those are the people directly responsible and yeah, I'm sure Doug's aching to come in and give it both barrels.

Doug Downs (06:47): And you and I are both former journalists, right Adrian, we are not practising. I'm a TV...

Adrian Monck (06:51): News guy, CBS here. My turn in the story.

Doug Downs (06:56): And I feel strongly about this as a journalist. I don't pay the fee for the BBC, so I have no position that way. Just as a journalist for me, Adrian, sorry, that's not an error and it's not a mistake. It's a breach of the core principles that make journalism credible in the first place, of which BBC is at the top for credibility. Globally for credibility accuracy is non negotiable, fairness non negotiable. When you distort a quote, you distort public understanding. That's unethical in my book. At the same time, the BBC is an institution that has shaped public broadcasting for a century. It matters deeply to people across the UK around the world. And that's exactly why acts like this cut so deeply when a newsroom with that level of trust gets it wrong on purpose, the damage extends far beyond one segment to all journalists in all countries. We need integrity, not interpretation. David and Farzana.

Farzana Baduel (08:10): PR is a lot more than just knocking out press releases. A lot of PR is about contextual intelligence and identifying risk. So from a PR perspective, I would say, well first of all, there was a real concern about the political appointees on the BBC board. The composition of the board should have raised questions and concerns in terms of reputational risk, in terms of perceived bias. And I think that's one thing that I think is quite interesting and it's beginning to gain a lot of momentum. You've had the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy saying that it is a real concern about political appointees on the BBC board and also Adrian just alluded to other right wing media, it is a massive coup for them because if you think about it from a competitive perspective, British media have to compete with the BBC when the BBC get actually money from the licence payer.

(08:59): So they're sort of seen as an organisation that has an unfair advantage. I also was in DC a year ago and I was with a friend of mine from the DC bureau and she told me how well the BBC is doing in the US in terms of its growth trajectory. So whilst a lot of newsrooms are shrinking around the world, the DC bureau actually was growing in terms of headcount. And so I wonder what's going to now happen because actually a lot of people were tuning into the BBC for the impartiality, but where were the PRs that were identifying the risk of having political appointees on the board and the impact it will have to the impartiality that the BBC had its positioning. And as we know, the damage to the brand always happens when there is a gap between what its states as positioning is impartiality and what the reality is. And alarm bells should have been set from the beginning when the political appointees and the bias inherent that comes from those positions. That should have been done a long time ago. But I think we're seeing the beginning of a lot more stories that are going to be coming out about the bias at the heart of the BBC.

David Gallagher (10:08): Yeah, I think you're right. And I guess we've already kind of touched on the mainframes. It's a journalism story, it's a political story. It's a question about the role of a public broadcaster in this day and age. I guess the only thing I would add from a comms or PR perspective, we've been watching the erosion, actually an assault on the fourth estate for years, maybe decades now for traditional mainstream media. And we're starting to see them stumble or even crumble in some cases. And these types of mistakes or ethical breaches don't help that at all and maybe think it's a good thing if you don't think that the press should stand up to power. Maybe you think this is a good thing. I worry about the future for democracy and for society. If we see organisations like the BBC unable or unwilling to stand up to power. I know we got to move on. I'd heard something yesterday about maybe the King could talk Trump into dropping his billion dollar lawsuit. I don't know if there's a point of view on that. If we have a few more minutes, maybe we can come back to that.

Adrian Monck (11:19): Prince Andrew probably. Sorry, wrong man.

David Gallagher (11:23): Yeah, he's now Andrew. Well, Doug, I think you had another suggestion for us in terms of another thing that caught your attention and obviously that was the reopening of the US government, so you want to take us there.

Doug Downs (11:35): And that's been the dominant story throughout the US. I think a lot of the reaction to the BBC story in the US from friends that I have is yeah, the media lied, film at 11, who cares? That's honestly been their reaction with a shrug, which is amazing. Okay, so this story about the government shutdown, President Trump's now signed a spending Bill to reopen the US government and end the longest shutdown in American history. Forty three days over seven weeks, 1.4 million federal employees have been on unpaid leave or working without pay. In the meantime, public services saw major delays, social programmes faced funding pauses for food aid. Air travel has been heavily affected with thousands of flight cancellations as air traffic staff called in absent and messaging and comms channels in 2025 can come from all kinds of directions these days.

Air Steward via X (12:33): I don't really care what your political persuasion is, but you should really call your senator because I'll tell you, this is costing the airlines millions of pounds and just think of 30 aeroplanes with one engine running, it's going to take us at least 90 minutes to take off. So it's frustrating. It's really frustrating for me.

Doug Downs (12:54): To get that stop gap Bill passed several Democrats broke ranks and supported the Republicans. Most Democrats didn't want to give in. Both Republicans and Democrats have been trading blame in real time, each framing the other as irresponsible, politically motivated. The Republican message has been that the Democrats are obstructing key budget reforms and the Dems' response has been that the shutdown is a result of partisan brinkmanship. So to the group, and Adrian, I'm going to go to you first as our guest. In the private sector crisis communication is about transparency, empathy and swift resolution. In politics, those same principles often give way to deflection, blame and framing the opponent's failure rather than fixing the issue. Are governments and political leaders held to the same standards of accountability and communication as corporations during a time of crisis?

Adrian Monck (13:49): I would say absolutely not. I mean, I think you only have to look at the way the political system operates right now, not just in the United States, but I think across the West as we used to call it. And it's a system that's in crisis mostly because barring a few creaky adjustments, these systems have not really been fundamentally transformed since their inception. They've had the odd amendment, they've had the odd thing added here, taken away there. But here in, well here, but in Great Britain, my home, you have people who have titles that go back a thousand years sitting in an unelected second chamber. In the US you have a Senate that's completely out of whack with the distribution of population in the United States. There's all kinds of layers of dysfunction built into these systems. And companies, if they're dysfunctional, go out of business, companies fold or they merge or they get overtaken by someone else in the same business. It doesn't happen with states or governments. Someone else comes along, says, I'll run the place, I'll do better than the last guy. And guess what, the system is set up. It doesn't matter who you are, you will fail.

David Gallagher (15:08): Yeah, I got to agree and say absolutely not. Businesses are not held to the same standards and in theory at least a CEO has a board. They have shareholders, they have regulatory authorities, they might even care about what the public thinks. So there's a lot of moats to protect the public from them. From a PR perspective, I think there's a couple of things that are interesting. The first is just the importance of framing. And I have to say that, and I say this as a committed Democrat, the Democrats were winning the framing question, at least in terms of what public polling was saying about who was responsible for the shutdown and who was most likely to come up with a solution for it. The Democrats were winning in polls and they're winning an election. So framing is important. Timing is important too. I happened to be on a call earlier this week with Tim Kaine, one of the Senators who went with it.

(15:59): And not that I'm on his speed dial or anything, I'm a Virginia voter. So he held a kind of a town hall and he talked us through his thinking, which was more thoughtful than I went in thinking it would be. I kind of get the logic, but whether you agree with the logic or not, most Democrats really disagreed with both the timing and then the way it was framed that the reversal was framed. But my main takeaway point is that this story will be dead next week. It's already dying and it's already been replaced by the Epstein story. And not that everything that happens in PR or the media is reality, but it does define what a lot of people accept as reality. And I think that we'll be talking about nothing but Epstein next week and very little about the shutdown.

Farzana Baduel (16:45): So we have been talking about Africa, 54 countries and talking about really place branding, be it country, be it city, be it region. And it leads me to a really interesting story that I came across and it's about a 700 million pound tech founder behind a company called Improbable who's now preparing to leave the UK for Dubai. Here he is called Herman Narula, and he had a conversation with the Telegraph and Rachel Reeves, she apparently is planning a settling up tax. And what that basically means is you're sort of slightly mugged on your way out of the UK where you're going through Heathrow. And what they want is if you're looking to leave the UK, the government are proposing a tax of around about, I think 20 percent before you can actually leave the country. And so he's thinking, actually, should I be leaving before that is brought in?

(17:45): And it's forcing him to consider him to emigrate and not because he wants to go to Dubai where he's thinking because actually he wants to be in London, but because he feels that he's going to be punished for not leaving with this potential tax, the settling up tax. And he also goes further to describe the UK as being anti entrepreneur, too unstable, too risky to remain a resident under the proposed tax rules. And he's not alone. You've also had Revolut's founder, Nikolay Storonsky, moving his residency again to the UAE, shipping billionaire John Fredriksen leaving the UK saying Britain has gone to hell. So I wanted to ask you guys, what do you think about how the UAE and specifically Dubai is actually just attracting this huge, huge number of people from the UK and around the world in terms of its sort of nation branding story and where are we going wrong?

(18:38): Is it just about tax in terms of the UK, it's just people just leaving because they don't want to pay their fair share, whatever that may be is subjective. Dubai has spent years positioning itself as a place where ambitious people go when they're tired of chaos elsewhere. And that's really the core. So the UAE, are they selling certainty? There's no political swings, no sudden rule changes. Is it about tax? Is it about consistency? What is it? I mean, or is it just basically people don't want to pay their fair share of tax and they're sodding off to the UAE where they can get away with it. But I'm really interested in the country branding aspect because actually it's not just companies who are at war with each other in terms of talent, it's countries and it could lead to brain drain. So I'm going to ask Doug because you're the birthday boy.

Doug Downs (19:27): Okay, well, I love the comment from Anne Marie Blake. Let me find my tiny tiny violin and play it for this poor rich person and his 20 percent. I appreciate that. Thank you Anne Marie. We've got a client of ours very successful who's moved part time to Dubai, so some of the podcast recordings we've been doing, he's at his home in Dubai and taxes were a big part of it. But what's life like? Are there Seven Elevens? That kind of question. I don't remember the name of the brand that mimics the Seven Eleven concept, but it's all there. He's loving it. Life is good. So I think you're right, Farzana, taxes are part of the big allure, but there's more to it and the weather isn't bad.

David Gallagher (20:09): Well, I was with Anne Marie, and Dubai or UAE where billionaires go to escape oppression, it did kind of make me smile. But I take your point of view too about intentional policy to attract talent. And in fact, we touched last week on could we rebrand immigration, which seems to be such a lightning rod issue in a lot of places. And is this a different way of talking about immigration? And that's essentially what they're doing. Personally, I don't know that tech bro paradise is where I'd want to go, but I do believe in choice and maybe that is a brand that people would like to be able to choose. So I would probably leave it at that. But I know Adrian spends time in that part of the world and has a more informed view than I do.

Adrian Monck (20:58): I do spend a lot of time in the UAE and I think it's interesting to see how it's changed. It has, I think post COVID, become a lot more attractive globally, but also the world has moved to make the UAE and Dubai and Abu Dhabi far more relevant. It's three hours from India, it has a huge population of affluent Indians who want to be between India and markets in Africa. You have Chinese entrepreneurs moving there because China is full of people with energy who want to go to new markets. You have now a similar effect of people coming from Europe wanting to go there. And also I think to plug into the youth, you've got 60 percent of the population under the age of 30 again, which does change the way a society looks. It's not as grey as London in terms of just how old people are.

(21:52): I think that makes a difference, right? My son spent a couple of summers ago, he's 21 and he's actually running a startup in London, but he was in Saudi Arabia and he found it extraordinary because just to be around other young people in a society where young people are normal and they're in a majority. And I think those things are the things that make somewhere like the UAE right now interesting. And on the tax issue, I mean the grief, I mean Switzerland, you get mugged on the way out. It's a civilised thing to pay your dues when you leave a country if you're leaving because you don't like paying taxes. I'm personally a big believer in tax. I think having arms, health services, education is kind of a good thing. And as you have more money, you probably should pay more over to help do all those nice things. But if you don't believe in it, maybe you do want to get on a plane. But I think there's other reasons why places like the UAE are successful beyond that.

David Gallagher (22:50): Death and taxes. You're completely right.

Doug Downs (22:55): Yeah. I think that kind of brings us to a close. Adrian, thank you so much for joining us. You were fantastic. Great insight.

Adrian Monck (23:03): Pleasure, pleasure. Thanks for having me guys.

David Gallagher (23:05): Also, thanks to our superstar producers Emily Page and David Olajide who had a birthday earlier this week. David, happy birthday. Special thanks to Adrian Monck as well. The Week UnSpun is a co production of Curzon Public Relations, Stories and Strategies and Folgate Advisors. These shows go fast, but the recordings are on Apple, Spotify and YouTube as well as David's LinkedIn channel. Give them a like and a share if you could. And one final thought before you speak or post on social media, let your words pass through these three gates. Is it true? Is it kind? And is it necessary? Have a great weekend.

David Gallagher (23:49): Happy birthday, Doug.