The BBC’s editing error was serious, but the response is way out of proportion | Margaret Sullivan

Wed, 12 Nov 2025

The broadcaster should not cave to Trump’s demands

You can’t be in the news business and avoid mistakes. That’s why responsible media organizations correct their errors and acknowledge them to the public. It’s why newsroom leaders take steps, internally, to repair broken processes. It’s why they sometimes go so far as to apologize or take stories down.

Some mistakes, of course, are worse than others. A misspelled name is one thing. Sustained coverage that is misleading or false is quite another. And there are plenty of gradations between those two poles.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture