(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) British news channel BBC “doctored” President Donald Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, 2021, to make it appear he called on supporters to riot at the Capitol before lawmakers certified the 2020 election.
The alteration was exposed in an internal memo first reported by British newspaper The Telegraph. The doctored footage concerned Trump’s speech on the Ellipse as aired by BBC’s Panorama in a 2024 special called Trump: A Second Chance.
The broadcast trimmed Trump’s remarks to make it seem he said he would walk to the Capitol with his supporters to “fight, fight like hell.”
In reality, Trump said he would walk to the Capitol to “cheer on” lawmakers opposing the certification. The “fight like hell” line came nearly an hour later, long after he vowed to head to the Capitol.
Worse still, Trump had explicitly called on his supporters to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
🚨 BREAKING: The BBC was just exposed for DOCTORING President Trump’s Jan 6 speech to make it seem he ENDORSED rioting, per whistleblower
“We’re gonna walk to the Capitol”
DOCTORED: “And FIGHT LIKE HELL!”
ORIGINAL: “And cheer on congressmen and women!” pic.twitter.com/z88mmVhikG…
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 3, 2025
The discrepancy was first identified by a BBC standards committee in a 19-page dossier. According to The Telegraph, the document found that Panorama made Trump “say” things he never said.
The committee also called out BBC executives and its chairman for ignoring scathing complaints about bias, including in its Arabic coverage of the Israel-Gaza war.
The damning dossier surfaced amid a string of humiliating losses for legacy media outlets over their coverage of Trump.
In July, CBS News’s parent company, Paramount Global, entered a $16 million settlement with Trump after its 60 Minutes program edited a 2024 interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris to make her appear more eloquent.
Holy. Shit.
60 Minutes cut Kamala’s nonsense answer on Israel and replaced it with a completely seperate sentence she said earlier in the interview…
Mixing and matching questions and answers. This isn’t journalism. It’s fraud.pic.twitter.com/onXli46xL6
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) October 8, 2024
Similarly, ABC News’s parent company Disney agreed to pay Trump $15 million in December 2024 after embattled host George Stephanopoulos falsely accused him of raping anti-Trump figurehead E. Jean Carroll. This settlement included a $1 million payment to cover Trump’s legal fees.
Social media companies have also been forced to pay Trump for banning him following the 2020 election.
Google’s YouTube paid Trump $24.5 million following its decision to shut down his channel after Jan. 6, 2021. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta paid Trump $25 million, while X (then named Twitter) paid $10 million for the same act of censorship.
