GRAHAM STOTHARD: This was the video edit that set these events into motion. Donald Trump’s speech in 2021, ahead of the Capitol Hill riots, cut for a Panorama documentary in a way now found to have misled viewers, made to look like he was explicitly inciting the violence. An apology from the BBC was expected tomorrow, but instead this evening, a shock announcement. Tim Davie who has been at the organisation for twenty years, headed it for five, was stepping down. 

– ITV News, 10 November 2025

Hello, I’m Linton Besser, welcome to Media Watch.

And tonight we’re going to examine the crisis engulfing one of the world’s most venerated news organisations, the resignations of its most senior officials and a grovelling apology to the US President after the leak of a damaging internal memo.

RAF SANCHEZ: The misleading edit was one of a number of issues raised in a leaked internal BBC report … 

– NBC News, 11 November 2025

The memo written by Michael Prescott, a former veteran political journalist and independent external adviser to the BBC, was leaked to London’s The Daily Telegraph which mounted a full-throated case against Britain’s public broadcaster – printing the dossier in full and splashing its scoop across page one, six days on the trot:

Heads ‘should roll over BBC bias’

– The Daily Telegraph (UK), 5 November 2025

Davie must explain or quit, says Johnson

– The Daily Telegraph (UK), 7 November 2025

The campaign did indeed force the departure not just of Tim Davie, the BBC director-general, but also Deborah Turness, the head of news.

Prescott’s letter identified four broad areas which concerned him, including a reluctance within the BBC to file reports critical of a so-called ‘trans agenda’, the reporting of false allegations of racism, and a stinging critique of how the war in Gaza was covered by the BBC’s specialist Arabic language service including the claim that: 

… the BBC’s main news website posted 19 separate stories about the hostages taken by Hamas … On BBC Arabic there were none.

– The Daily Telegraph (UK), 7 November 2025

Although archive searches confirm BBC Arabic did indeed report the seizing of Israeli hostages by Hamas militants.

Prescott also criticised the extensive use of three Gazan journalists by BBC Arabic, not just because of antisemitic remarks they made on social media, but because the BBC had tried to downplay their role even after hundreds of appearances on the Arabic news service.

But it was Prescott’s allegation that the BBC’s flagship television program, Panorama, had improperly edited Donald Trump’s infamous January 6 speech which was the tipping point:

REPORTER: Here’s what the documentary showed.

DONALD TRUMP: We’re gonna to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight, we fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell you’re not gonna have a country anymore. 

REPORTER: And here’s the original, starting off the same. 

DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. 

REPORTER: But the next part of the speech was actually almost an hour later.

– NBC News, 11 November 2025

The editing of speech for brevity is a routine duty of journalists the world over. But dangers abound and vital context must not be stripped away, not least when dealing with a vengeful US President, who swiftly demanded restitution to the tune of billions of dollars.

On Friday, the BBC delivered him an apology, though declined to offer compensation, disputing there were grounds for a defamation claim.

Some in Britain, including The Observer, saw other forces at play, and found the departures of Davie and Turness were the: 

… result of a political attack that exposes structural flaws in the BBC’s independence. A process of intimidation … is now unfolding in plain sight.

– The Observer, 10 November 2025

At the centre of this analysis are the activities of Robbie Gibb, formerly a BBC reporter, adviser to right-wing GB News, and chief spinner for Tory PM Theresa May – who was appointed to the BBC board by May’s successor, the arch conservative Boris Johnson.

The BBC fiasco received wide coverage across Australia with several commentators alleging the same problems exist here at the ABC. 

The Australian, for example, even went so far as to illustrate a story about the BBC crisis with the ABC logo, while running hard with critics of the organisation and printing an editorial calling for an examination at the ABC of the same issues including the ABC’s treatment of the war in Gaza and transgender care for children.

The paper has also printed allegations an ABC Four Corners program reported by Sarah Ferguson was guilty of similarly improper editing of the very same Trump speech, in this 2021 doco:

DONALD TRUMP: And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you … Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.

– Four Corners, ABC, 1 February 2021

The claim first made by Sky News host, Chris Kenny:

CHRIS KENNY: … just like the BBC they cut out what he said after he said he was going down there. They cut out the stuff about going down and cheering senators… They have clipped up the speech to suit their narrative rather than reality and the true meaning of what Donald Trump was saying that day.

– The Kenny Report, Sky News Australia, 10 November 2025

In response, the ABC’s managing director Hugh Marks came out swinging, describing the accusation as:

… opportunistic and false … The grab on Four Corners was used accurately … and did not mislead the audience. 

– Statement, Hugh Marks, ABC Managing Director, 12 November 2025

Peter Meakin, who spent decades as the director of news and current affairs variously for channels Seven, Nine, and Ten said the two edits were different.

I don’t think Four Corners is guilty of too much at all, actually. The bottom line is that it was indeed a rabble-rousing speech.

– Phone, Peter Meakin, 16 November 2025

As none other than Chris Kenny wrote at the time:

Such lawlessness is inexcusable … worst of all, that it was fomented and encouraged by the Commander in Chief and Chief Executive is frightening.

– The Australian, 7 January 2021

Sarah Ferguson told us this very story by Kenny:

… underlines the hypocrisy of [the] attacks on our reporting – the story he’s criticising reached the same conclusions as him about Donald Trump’s culpability.

– Email, Sarah Ferguson, ABC journalist, 16 November 2025

Chris Kenny said:

I have long been critical of Donald Trump’s refusal to offer his loser’s consent after the 2020 election, but I believe deceptively editing his words in order to buttress that view is unethical. 

– Email, Chris Kenny, Columnist and Sky News Host, 17 November 2025

Journalist and academic Margaret Simons, said vested interests:

Predictably … are trying to make [the BBC crisis] a strike against the ABC. They should chill. The ABC is certainly not perfect, but it has clean hands in this case.

– Email, Margaret Simons, Journalist and Academic, 14 November 2025

The same critics have also hauled back into the spotlight another Sarah Ferguson Four Corners about Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections, picking up accusations made by columnist Chris Mitchell that the doco was discredited because it featured:

… Democrats intelligence sources who knew they were perjuring themselves because they had already told secret congressional hearings they had no evidence linking Trump to Putin.

– The Australian, 13 October 2025

But we failed to find a single such source appearing in the more than two-hour long documentary.

So we asked Chris Mitchell and The Australian to explain who these people were. 

A spokesperson for the paper told us we were:

… cherry picking a defence for the ABC that ignores the broader issues of concern around the ABC’s failure to meet its obligations of impartiality and accuracy.

– Email, Spokesperson for The Australian, 16 November 2025

And when Chris Mitchell himself responded, he identified not sources plural but just a one –  former US intelligence boss James Clapper:

Clapper admitted in secret testimony and public interviews back in early 2017 he had seen no evidence President Trump colluded with Russia or Putin. 

– Email, Chris Mitchell, Columnist, The Australian, 13 November 2025

But neither Clapper nor Sarah Ferguson ever claimed that Trump had colluded with the Kremlin.

Rather, her program’s reporting about the existence of a Russian influence campaign in 2016 was in line with the findings of the US intelligence community.

And as for Chris Mitchell’s allegations of perjury, James Clapper’s remarks to the ABC were entirely in keeping with what he has always said about Russian meddling.

But what of the other two major ways in which the ABC, according to its critics, must be held to account like the BBC? 

Firstly, has the ABC really failed to examine possible bias in its reporting of the war in Gaza?

In fact, in 2023, a music program on Triple J was indeed pinged for failing the ABC standard on impartiality.

And the ABC News division has been found to have made serious errors, such as not reporting important context about the firing of Hamas rockets. 

Or most egregiously when ABC television news programs reported an already retracted UN claim that 14,000 Gazan babies would die of starvation in the following 48 hours.

But after thousands of complaints, the ABC’s independent ombudsman has not identified a single occasion on which its news coverage breached the ABC’s specific impartiality obligation, reporting a roughly equal number of complaints from both sides in the past two years. 

The ABC has not always got it right, but mistakes have been few when considering the comprehensive coverage provided across multiple channels.

– ‘The ABC of Complaints’, Fiona Cameron, ABC Ombudsman, 25 September 2025

But as for that third major criticism that the ABC, like the BBC, is failing to report critically on transgender issues, we fear there may indeed be grounds for concern. 

Because despite some coverage in recent years, like this Four Corners, about the debate over youth gender care and these online stories – all of which have included criticisms of the gender-affirming approach to care – there have also been significant gaps, beginning three years ago with dramatic news that the prominent Tavistock Clinic in London was to be shuttered.

Despite Australian physicians mirroring some of Tavistock’s gender-affirming approach, this news was not reported by the ABC for three weeks after the event. Since then, a number of significant developments have played out, like this one in an Australian court, reported in June:

RENOWNED PROFESSOR REVEALED AS SUBJECT OF JUDGE’S CRITICISM 

NATIONAL GUIDELINES QUESTIONED 

– The Australian, 6 June 2025

That story revealed that Michelle Telfer, Australia’s experienced gender-medicine expert, was identified as having given misleading evidence in a Family Court case involving a mother wanting puberty blockers for her 12-year-old child.

The judge in that case questioned claims puberty blockers were fully reversible and relatively risk-free, as well as what he described as the:

“ … oddly binary approach … in relation to children … to affirm unreservedly those who present with concerns regarding their gender …”

– The Australian, 6 June 2025

The story, of obvious significance, was covered by the Law Report on ABC Radio National.

But even though the ABC News division had previously shown great interest in Telfer’s work, including in this 2021 doco, it published not a single story about the case which might have also canvassed criticisms of the judgment.

In 2014, Four Corners produced this intimate and important portrait of two children seeking to change gender – and a landmark Family Court ruling which eased the availability of puberty blockers, interviewing its then chief justice Diana Bryant who wrote the decision.

Last week, however, Diana Bryant revealed she would not find the same way now:

“… if I were deciding the … case now and had the evidence that’s now becoming available, I certainly doubt that I would have come to the conclusion that … (court) approval wasn’t needed for puberty blockers.”

– The Australian, 10 November 2025

Which, a week on, has yet to be reported by the ABC.

Meanwhile, Auntie has also failed to tell its audience about an appeal of a Federal Court decision, which ruled for the first time that a trans-woman must be granted access to a women-only online space under the Sex Discrimination Act.

Nor as far as we can tell, has the ABC interviewed Sall Grover, the woman running that appeal, despite her appearing regularly in other parts of the media.

We asked the ABC if those stories should have been covered or covered more extensively.

A spokesperson told us:

We’re always open to feedback if there are significant gaps in news coverage or we could do more.

– Email, ABC spokesperson, 14 November 2025

Adding:

The ABC takes no position on gender affirming care but seeks to adequately cover this issue, keeping in mind its obligation to not unduly cause harm … Over time the ABC has covered this issue from many angles and given voice to both opponents and proponents of gender-affirming care.

– Email, ABC spokesperson, 14 November 2025

There are, I’m sure, several reasons for these gaps in the ABC’s coverage, and I suspect one of them is how clamorous the blowback can be reporting this very difficult story about a very vulnerable community.

But the ABC and its journalists have a duty to the public to find the courage to do so, with just as much dispassion as compassion. 

So, what of the bigger picture?

What lesson might Australia draw from the BBC crisis?

Margaret Simons says it’s about protecting the ABC’s independence and not allowing its board to be stacked by ideologues:

There have [also] been times in the ABC’s past when its board has included political activists … hostile to the ABC … Public broadcasters deserve scrutiny, but should also be treated as a key national asset. 

– Email, Margaret Simons, Journalist and Academic, 14 November 2025

After the usual critics used the BBC blow up to turn their blowtorches on the ABC, we at Media Watch have not been able to forensically examine the entire output of the organisation on these three very big and very tricky areas of reporting.

But notwithstanding the gaps in transgender coverage, from what we found there was nothing which might suggest, as The Australian did, that resignations might be called for at the ABC – not even close.

Rather, it seems, this was a naked attempt to draw the ABC into a public broadcasting crisis 17,000 kilometres away, which smeared without foundation some of the ABC’s finest reporting.