TRUMP, THE BBC, AND MY EYES AND EARS PART 1

I REMEMBER JANUARY 6, 2020, ALL TOO WELL. Wikipedia describes it in a “Timeline of the January 6 United States Capitol Attack.” Here, in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow, are tidbits gleaned from this Wikipedia article—just as tidbits were gleaned by BBC for its “Panorama—Trump: A Second Chance,” the documentary over which Trump plans to “sue them for anywhere between $1bn [£759m] and $5bn, probably sometime next week.” This quoted portion from Helen Sullivan, BBC News, November 15, 2025.

“On Thursday [October 13, 2025],” Sullivan writes, “the BBC said the edit of the 6 January 2021 speech had unintentionally given ‘the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action’ and said it would not be broadcast again. The corporation apologised to the president but said it would not pay financial compensation.”

I’m certainly glad to hear the latter. I’ve come to trust BBC a lot more than Trump.

Background. I don’t pretend to know British policies/politics of broadcasting. However, I’ve long admired the veracity of BBC. And here are facts suggesting its complexity: BBC is supported by an annual fee per TV set of £174.50 ($229.90) for a colour license and—how quaintly—£58.50 ($77.07) for an annual black-and-white license. In March 2024, there were 23.9 million licences, of which 3,600 (0.015%) were monochrome (black and white).

Funding. Wikipedia recounts (with considerably dated figures), “Thus, the licence fee made up the bulk (75.7%) of the BBC’s total income of £5.0627 billion in 2017–18.” By contrast, our federal funding primarily through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had provided around 15 percent of support—before Trump and DOGE halted all CPB funding in July 2025.

The Latest. “CPB Agrees To Revive a $36 Million Deal With NPR Killed After Trump’s Pressure” reads NPR, updated November 17, 2025: “The arrangement,” David Folkenflick reports, “resolves litigation filed by NPR accusing the corporation of illegally yielding to Trump’s demands that the network be financially punished for its news coverage. The argument, part of a broader lawsuit by NPR and several stations against the Trump administration, focused on CPB funding for NPR’s operation of a satellite distribution system for local public radio stations. NPR announced Monday it would waive all fees for the stations associated with the satellite service for two years.” [This information added here today, November 23, 2025, at 7:30 a.m. Pacific.]

International Expansion. Nevertheless with regard to BBC, it appears Trump is trying to expand internationally this racket of extorting U.S. media to report things his way or else. See “Trump’s $5 Bilion Lawsuit Threat Against BBC Comes Amid Spate of Legal Wins Over Media Companies,” Fox News, November 16, 2025. By the way, apart from Truth Social, this appears to be Trump’s personally preferred medium. It’s also the one having paid Dominion Voting $787 million in damages concerning the 2020 election.

What I Saw and Heard; What Wikipedia Documented: “December 19, 2020. 1:42 a.m—Trump announces the January 6 rally on Twitter, stating: ‘Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!’ ”

Was he merely predicting or suggesting wildness?

And what’s this about “impossible to have lost”? Even after Fox News had been “besieged with angry protests not only from President Donald J. Trump’s camp but from its own viewers because it had called the battleground state of Arizona for Mr. Biden. Never mind that the call was correct; Fox executives worried that they would lose viewers to hard-right competitors like Newsmax,” this from Peter Baker, “Inside the Panic at Fox News After the 2020 Election,” The New York Times, March 4, 2023.

Tomorrow in Part 2, the Wikipedia Timeline picks up with January 6, 2021, 11:50 a.m. By then, things were on the telly; I was watching. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025