Since Donald J. Trump emerged improbably victorious in the 2024 presidential election, there has been an unprecedented reckoning in the mainstream media, and countless liberal reporters have lost not just their soapboxes but their very livelihoods. From the supercilious Terry Moran at ABC to the unfunny late-night comedian Stephen Colbert at CBS, the casualties have mounted steadily. Even that august liberal institution, the Washington Post, has purged itself of several leftist bomb-throwers, and it has committed itself to celebrating capitalism, freedom, and American exceptionalism. How the mighty are fallen!
Few would have imagined, however, that the power of Trump and Trumpism to reshape the media landscape could extend beyond the borders of the United States, but this is indeed what we have seen. This week, the British Broadcasting Corporation, home to one of the world's biggest and most hallowed news organizations, was shaken to its core. Its Director-General and its News CEO resigned in the wake of a scandal that featured none other than President Trump as its centerpiece. How could this be, you may ask, and since when has the mainstream media cared whether any of its claims about Donald Trump were true, speculative, or purely made-up?
The story begins with a BBC-produced Panorama special on Donald Trump, including his role in the January 6th “insurrection” at the Capitol, so beloved of every TDS-infected leftist worldwide. The special spliced together two different clips of Trump speaking to his supporters before the Capitol riot took place, spoken almost an hour apart. The “edited” clips made it appear that Trump had encouraged his backers to “fight” at the Capitol, and even promised to join them in the fray. Of course, he did no such thing on January 6th, 2021, but, since the show was broadcast in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, journalistic scruples were set aside to serve the “greater good” of forestalling a second term for ORANGE MAN BAD.
That the BBC would defame Donald Trump will hardly come as a surprise to anyone who is even slightly conversant with the organization and its reportage, so why then did this incident cause so many high-ranking heads to roll? For more than a year, it didn't. The BBC quietly went about its usual business of making Trump, the Israelis, and anyone else the establishment left disdains, look as bad as possible. Then, quite suddenly, an internal memo was leaked, making it clear that BBC watchdogs were aghast at this breach of journalistic ethics and professionalism...and that the BBC hierarchy had done nothing about it. Somewhat improbably, BBC bigwigs took the resulting firestorm of criticism to heart, and, as the leaders of a government-backed broadcaster, they decided that there was no way to restore, or at least shore up, the threadbare credibility of the BBC except by resigning.
Now, will these personnel changes fundamentally alter the deep-seated biases of the BBC? Will its reporters henceforth praise Trump as often as they castigate him? No one believes that. Nevertheless, the abasement of such powerful and esteemed Trump-hating media executives is an historic accomplishment, and it will serve as a shot across the bow to media organizations worldwide.
The prime directive of the establishment news media – that everything must be made to appear bad, and Donald J. Trump must be made to appear responsible – may, someday soon, be replaced by a new first principle: that the news, based on verifiable facts, should be reported without prejudice or favor, and the people should then be allowed to draw their own conclusions about what it means.
Wouldn't that be nice?
Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is a history professor at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com . He appears on the Newsmakers show on WLEA/WYSL.