Donald Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt has launched a blistering attack on the BBC, branding it “100% fake news” and a “taxpayer-funded propaganda machine” after fresh allegations that the broadcaster misled viewers in a Panorama documentary by selectively editing one of Trump’s speeches.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Leavitt accused the BBC of “purposefully dishonest” reporting, claiming its coverage of Trump and his administration routinely distorts facts to promote a left-leaning agenda.
“Every time I travel to the United Kingdom with President Trump and am forced to watch the BBC in our hotel rooms, it ruins my day,” she said. “Their blatant propaganda and lies about the President and all he’s doing to make America better and the world a safer place are disgraceful.”
Her remarks come after a leaked internal memo—purportedly written by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee—claimed that a Panorama episode “completely misled” viewers by editing together two separate parts of Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech.
The programme allegedly omitted the portion where Trump urged supporters to act “peacefully and patriotically,” while retaining a more inflammatory section in which he told them to “fight like hell” and march to the Capitol.
According to excerpts published by The Telegraph, Prescott wrote: “It was completely misleading to edit the clip in the way Panorama aired it. The fact that he did not explicitly exhort supporters to go down and fight at Capitol Hill was one of the reasons there were no federal charges for incitement to riot.”
The document, reportedly a 19-page dossier, also accused the BBC of “systemic bias” across multiple departments.
Prescott is said to have criticized the corporation’s Arabic-language coverage of the Gaza war, alleging that it had repeatedly platformed commentators sympathetic to Hamas and that editorial standards “varied starkly” between BBC Arabic and the main English-language site.
He also took aim at the network’s coverage of transgender issues, claiming that a small internal group of staff aligned with Stonewall’s activist positions had “captured” the newsroom, leading to “a constant drip-feed of one-sided stories celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity.”
The memo has reportedly caused unease within the BBC and drawn criticism from British lawmakers, who said the corporation must “answer serious questions” about its editorial integrity and independence.
In response, a BBC spokesperson said: “While we don’t comment on leaked documents, when the BBC receives feedback it takes it seriously and considers it carefully.
Michael Prescott is a former adviser to a board committee where differing views and opinions of our coverage are routinely discussed and debated.”
The controversy comes amid Trump’s renewed criticism of Western media outlets, which he accuses of “global collusion” against conservative movements.
Leavitt’s attack marks one of the sharpest rebukes of the BBC by a U.S. administration official in recent memory — underscoring how political polarization in America is increasingly spilling into transatlantic media relations.
