As the British Broadcasting Corporation finds itself embroiled in scandal, the world is watching the implosion of the media network with either horror or happiness, depending on one's dedication to pesky things like truth. Heads are already rolling, with their Director-General Tim Davie and news CEO Deborah Turness resigning after President Donald Trump threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion. Why? In response to its "Panorama" documentary released days before the 2024 election that strategically edited his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, to falsely portray the president as having incited the Capitol riots, achieved by splicing together three distinct quotes from two sections of the speech — sections that were spread across almost an hour — and removing Trump's call for peaceful demonstration.

Now, BBC Chair Samir Shah apologized for what was described as an "error of judgement," but here's the problem: It wasn't an error of judgment. It was an intentional decision to slander Trump, made in complete alignment with the foundational principles of the BBC.

And while the presence of Trump — and his billion-dollar legal threat — has sucked the oxygen out of the room on this issue, this is just one of countless examples of the British media company's shameless bias, with others being demonstrated by its coverage of transgenderism, immigration and the war between Israel and Hamas.

On the subject of Israel's efforts to defeat Hamas and return the hostages taken by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists during their pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023, there were times when the BBC was practically indistinguishable from overt propaganda outlets such as Al Jazeera. The Telegraph even reported that, based on research by the pro-Israel media watchdog Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, the BBC had to correct an average of two stories every week on its coverage of Israel, while BBC Arabic made 215 corrections and clarifications in the past two years to stories "found to be biased, inaccurate or misleading."

This is not to mention the fact that the BBC aired a documentary narrated by the child of a Hamas official, or continued to hire openly antisemitic journalists or that BBC Arabic consistently ignored stories that were in any way critical of Hamas, all as the entire BBC organization pumped out Hamas propaganda without question. Oh, and let's not forget the BBC's proclivity for translating "Yahud" — Arabic for "Jews" — as "Israelis," lest its viewers discover the reality of bloodthirsty antisemitism in the Palestinian world!

Now, many are making the understandable point that the BBC is not alone, and that most mainstream media outlets, including those in the U.S., have engaged in similar behavior. Except there's one important difference: The BBC is a public corporation, and it has been since 1927. Its entire existence is built on the shoulders of the British taxpayer, which means that the buck stops not with the rolling heads at the top of the BBC, but with the pocketbooks of the British taxpayer.

These are the same British taxpayers who would, one way or another, pay the bill if Trump's $1 billion lawsuit were successful.

And yet, I'm still glad that Trump is suing media outlets for engaging in shameless acts of fiction. Yes, it's brashly Trump-centric, but does that make him wrong? Absolutely not. And if Trump is the only figure willing to fight for basic truth in the media, then we should all be cheering him on, especially if it means that the British people could finally be freed from the unaccountable bottomless money pit of propaganda that is the BBC.

To find out more about Ian Haworth and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: K. Mitch Hodge at Unsplash