I predicted the ABC would distort Trump’s speech – and it took 15 minutes to prove it
The self-justification seeps through these organisations via osmosis. They view themselves as a necessary antidote to the rapacious tendencies of the free market and right-of-centre political movements. I have worked among these people; this is their truth, their idea of fairness, and their vocation.
That is why the BBC’s delinquency over the Trump speech was no surprise – I see this kind of manipulation every day because I watch full media conferences, interviews and speeches, and then see how they are reported. Indeed, this tendency is so common at the ABC that when I saw the BBC Panorama transgression, I knew Four Corners would have done something similar, and it took me about 15 minutes on iview to find an almost identical sin.
The BBC clipped the phrase “we’re going to walk down to the Capitol” to a phrase a few seconds earlier, “and I’ll be there with you” and then clipped on part of the speech from 54 minutes later saying, “and we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not gonna have a country anymore”.
Critically the BBC cut out the President’s words after he said he’d walk to the Capitol where he described what he wanted people to do there: “To cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.” Instead, Panorama deliberately linked the President’s exhortation for protesters to head to the Capitol with words that could be interpreted as encouraging violence.
The ABC’s edit might not seem as egregious, but it committed the same sin to suit the same end. It ran Trump saying, “Now, it is up to congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you” before cutting to the words 25 seconds later: “Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
The ABC report then cut to pictures of Proud Boy protesters, and reporter Sarah Ferguson’s voiceover said: “Before the President finished speaking, members of a gang notorious for political violence had gathered close to the Capitol.” The inference was clear – Trump had urged the violence.
Another ABC Four Corners piece, reported by Mark Willacy, aired last July in the lead-up to the presidential election and made this claim even more directly with an even simpler distortion. Over vision of the worst of the rioting, Willacy’s voice over said: “Refusing to accept his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden, Trump told his supporters to march on the US Capitol.” He then cut to a clip from Trump’s speech: “We fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
Even though US electoral practices throw up a range of anomalies and need serious reform, I have been highly critical of Trump’s behaviour in refusing to accept the 2020 election result. His withholding of loser’s consent risked undermining the democratic process.
But this does not give his enemies and critics the right to twist or invert facts against him. To understand the extent of the deception in these reports you need to drill into more detail.
Trump never told anyone to “march on” the Capitol. To “march on” something has a specific meaning, it means to attack, and Willacy simply invented that instruction before cutting to words about fighting which came from a part of the speech where Trump talked about fighting against perceived electoral corruption.
The deviousness of Ferguson’s Four Corners editing is especially obvious because the 25 seconds it cut out contained one of only two parts of the speech where Trump says exactly what he wants the protesters to do when they get to the Capitol. “We’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down, anyone you want” said Trump, “but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them”.
There was only one other section where Trump talked about what should happen at the Capitol, and it is also the only place he mentioned marching, and you will note it was in a passive tone. “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” Trump said.
So, consider this, the journalists and producers at the BBC’s Panorama program and the ABC’s Four Corners pretended to convey to audiences what Trump encouraged protesters to do at the Capitol that day. Yet in his only direct advice to protesters, the President urged cheering on and peaceful patriotism.
And not only did the BBC and ABC fail to report those words but they deliberately cut around them, and used other snippets out of context to create the opposite impression. This is anti-journalism.
I have detailed in these pages and on Sky News for years the rampant misreporting and demonisation of Trump. When he talked about a “bloodbath” for the auto industry it was reported as threatening post-electoral violence, comedians have paraded around his fake severed head, celebrities have joked about having him assassinated, and pundits like the ABC’s Barrie Cassidy have prematurely written him off, Cassidy famously tweeting “Trump cannot win, the nightmare is over” on election night 2016.
To these journalists Trump is an evil, fascistic demagogue intent on destroying democracy and up-ending the global order. We are all entitled to our opinions, but the trouble is this cartoonish assessment clouds all their coverage.
Across the Western world the political bias has been so strong that it has materially misinformed vast audiences. Sometimes their deceptions are major, such as telling audiences Trump could never win, Brexit was doomed, Trump could never return, or that developed economies can operate on renewable energy and reach net zero.
Shot: Chaser: pic.twitter.com/n0U08PnUJb
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) November 9, 2025
Other deceits are minor and daily, usually fitting into one grand ideological sweep of history or another. When they dismiss the Wuhan lab leak story, ignore the Hunter Biden scandal or dishonestly snip up speeches to fit an anti-Trump narrative, no doubt it is justified in their minds as the pursuit of a grander “truth”.
They are kidding themselves.
For publicly funded broadcasters this is an abuse of taxpayers’ money, and a breach of their legally enforceable charters.
When they are called out, the public broadcasters instinctively react with denial – and if that does not cut it, they claim victimhood and wait it out.
Only very rarely do we see accountability, which makes the two senior resignations at the BBC this week so momentous. Whether this will lead to any long-term reform is doubtful.
But at the ABC there has only been denial. Managing director Hugh Marks not only excused the Four Corners edits but dubbed it “powerful journalism” while his news chief Justin Stevens complained about “sustained and inaccurate campaigns” against the public broadcasters.
In the same week the ABC was caught out over the Trump edit and had to apologise for a fake image used to ridicule the opposition on Insiders, it played the victim.
The ABC chose to cover the BBC controversy by having Ferguson interview the former editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, who dismissed the BBC’s edits as one of the “mishaps” or “mistakes” that are bound to happen.
Ferguson at least admitted the BBC edits were a “very serious mistake” but also claimed they “didn’t materially misrepresent the tone of that speech”.
Perhaps Ferguson was running cover for her own editing of the same speech. Regardless, she and Rusbridger seemed preoccupied with what the BBC’s critics were making of it all and wondering whether there would be ramifications for public broadcasting.
The Crikey website ran BBC analysis by Chris Warren, the former general secretary of the journalists’ union. “It’s not the first time Britain’s Tory media have brought down a BBC boss for being insufficiently right wing,” was his assessment, showing little regard for old-fashioned concepts like truthful journalism.
The Trump Derangement Syndrome is strong at the ABC. Ferguson herself compiled a three-part series in 2018, modestly dubbed “the story of the century”, which ran an elaborate, false, and specifically debunked conspiracy theory that it was Russia’s Vladimir Putin who installed Trump in the White House as a patsy. Seriously.
The ABC has never corrected this series or apologised for it, and it can still be viewed online. Retribution was Willacy’s two-part series about Trump’s attempt to return to the White House; there was a long-running podcast, Russia if you’re listening, desperately trying to breathe life into the Russia conspiracies; and most recently we have had Four Corners’ Chasing Trump’s billions. It is obsessive, relentless, jaundiced and jejune. And it is all bankrolled by a billion-dollar broadcasting behemoth that’s supposed to be focused on, you know, Australia.
Objective journalism, editorial policies, codes of conduct, basic human fairness, or even just respect for audiences – however you describe or define it, journalists have an obligation to relay reality, honestly. If they cannot commit to delivering that fundamental service they cannot be of much assistance and their interpretation, analysis and opinions will be worthless.
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There is a moral vanity about the cosseted workforces at the public broadcasters that will always work against such prosaic tasks as relaying the truth. The smug self-entitlement of the taxpayer-funded progressives means they see their role as correcting the coarseness of the aspirational plebeians in the profit-driven world that surrounds (and sustains) them.