Dutch writer and historian Rutger Bregman said the BBC’s decision to edit out his claim that President Donald Trump was the “most openly corrupt president in U.S. history” reflected how “universities, corporations and media networks [are] bending the knee to authoritarianism.”
Bregman wrote on Bluesky that he made the remark at a lecture he gave at the BBC Radio Theatre last month as part of the BBC’s Reith lecture series. But as the BBC aired the lecture on its programs, he said it removed his comment on Trump.
A BBC spokesperson told TheWrap that its programs “are required to comply with the BBC’s editorial guidelines, and we made the decision to remove one sentence from the lecture on legal advice.” Bregman, through an aide, declined to comment beyond his Bluesky posts.
Trump has threatened to sue the organization for between “$1 billion to $5 billion” over how it edited his Jan. 6 speech for a 2024 documentary, one of a series of legal threats he’s made against news outlets over their reports on him.
“This has happened against my wishes, and I’m genuinely dismayed by it,” Bregman wrote on Bluesky. “Not because people can’t disagree with my words, but because self-censorship driven by fear (Trump threatening to sue the BBC) should concern all of us.”
The focus of Bregman’s lecture, “Moral Revolution,” detailed “the current ‘age of immorality’” and explored “a growing trend for unseriousness among elites” to see “how we can follow history’s example and assemble small, committed groups to spark positive change,” according to the Reith lecture website.
“It’s especially ironic because the lecture is exactly about the ‘paralyzing cowardice’ of today’s elites,” Bregman noted. “About universities, corporations and media networks bending the knee to authoritarianism.”
After the BBC first issued its statement, in response to The Guardian, Bregman said the decisions to adhere to both its editorial standards and legal advice “don’t fit together.” He said the weeks since his Oct. 28 lecture should not have been consumed by an edit to a single sentence, which he claimed was made at the last minute.
“The truth is that the sentence wasn’t inaccurate – it was removed because of legal fears,” he wrote in conclusion. “And that’s exactly the concern my lecture raises: when institutions start censoring themselves out of fear of those in power.”
