Bias claims and Trump’s lawsuit against the BBC | Letters

Mon, 17 Nov 2025

Judgmental assertions of bias should not supplant careful analyses of evidence, writes Prof Peter Ayton. Plus letters from Peter Williams, Richard Evans, David Bell, Sam White and Ste Thomas

Your editorial (The Guardian view on the BBC under siege: Britain must defend its own truth, 10 November) argues that the row over the editing of Donald Trump’s speech for Panorama is a sideshow and that the real fight is over what impartiality means – and who gets to decide.

A disappointing feature of that fight is that both accusations and denials of bias are typically uncorroborated assertions: subjective judgments with little reference to any of the extensive research into broadcast bias conducted by both academics and broadcasting organisations.