His memo has sparked chaos at the BBC. Donald Trump has branded the corporation "corrupt". Here's what we know about the man who started it all.
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Who do you think Prescott sent his memo to? The doorman? The janitor perhaps? Maybe the gardener?
Thank you.
The memo highlighting the edit, was sent in summer 2025, the speech was made in January 6 2021. The program was broadcast October 28 2024. We are not sure when exactly the memo was received, but it was leaked at the end of October, meaning the BBC had it for around 3 months before it was leaked.
Certainly a recurrent criticism of the BBC is it is slow in decision making, but this was a non-urgent issue, a memo commenting on an event four years ago, on an external production broadcast a year earlier about which no complaints were received contemporaneously. A memo which would require substantial structural and philosophical alterations within the BBC.
Similarly with the 'Gaza' documentary. This was a bought in documentary, not a BBC production, the criticism seems to relate to a child narrator who appeared and was related (the son of) someone who was previously a junior member of the Gazan government (a deputy ministry of agriculture), this is a senior civil servant rather than a political position, The father Ayman Alyazouri, is an environmental scientist with a PhD* who has worked internationally prior to taking up a position in the Gazan government. He is not a terrorist, no evidence has been provided he is even a member of Hamas. No factual errors were identified. The sole criticism is that this should have been declared as a 'conflict of interest'.
* PhD in
Environmental Analytical Chemistry (Soil Remediation) from the University of Huddersfield; 'Analytical chemistry and phytoextraction of hexavalent chromium with
Portulaca oleracea.'
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