The British Broadcasting Corporation’s Reith Lectures are prestigious things, a highlight of the broadcasting year.
The 2025 lecturer is Rutger Bregman.
The first of this year’s lectures is available to listen here and there is a BBC transcript of that lecture here.
But there is something missing from the broadcast lecture and the transcript.
The broadcast lecture and the published transcript are not a complete and accurate record of what was actually said.
What is missing – edited out by the BBC – is a single line.
The line is that Donald Trump is “the most openly corrupt president in American history”.
As a special treat for those who are kind enough to pay for subscriptions for this blog, I have done a close look at those “legal reasons” from an English media law perspective.
You can read it on Substack here and on Patreon here.
If you financially support this blog by other means (eg PayPal), leave a comment below (which will not be published) and I can either add you as a complementary subscriber or send the post to your email address.
‘The better part of valour is discretion’.
The BBC has taken some knocks recently, setting itself up for more trouble seems unwise. That unpleasantness over a measly 1$Bn seems to have gone a bit quiet, sleeping dogs etc.
The BBC has plenty of very rich enemies and their supporters who would like to take lumps out of the BBC – and make a lot of money.
Mr Bregman is perfectly free to take his soapbox to Times Square and declaim his lecture in full. Or the NYT or WAPO might like it. Sure, it does look a bit cowardly of the BBC to censor his lecture but every publisher has a lawyer to worry them. And ICE to worry those with soapboxes. Anyway, everyone knows the BBC chopped the juicy bit and the juicy bit will find its way to every ear.
On a related Substack, all fine and large for comfy lawyers in warm offices to pontificate about military orders. Not much use to some poor unknown private grunt at the sharp end. A refusal will not end well, a dark and barely documented corner of Leavenworth most like.
Agreed, refusing unlawful orders (war crimes, crimes against humanity or “just” serious crimes against domestic law) will be TERRIFYING for any officer, soldier or government employee who does so.
Even from the point of view of self-interest, though, refusal might still be the less terrifying choice. Who’d want to live the rest of their lives knowing they could be arrested at any time by most of the world’s legal jurisdictions?
Remember the relatively recent cases of the concentration camp clerical worker and guard tried in their 90s for crimes against humanity they’d committed in their 20s? One at least was jailed, I don’t remember hearing the result of the other case. They wouldn’t have expected punishment so long after WW2 = but it happened.
There’s probably a far greater likelihood now of similar offenders being quickly located (eg through travel documentation, social media, etc) and then arrested.
When Israel’s PM takes long detours on international flights to avoid overflying a country that MIGHT execute the ICC warrant against him if they had the opportunity, then perhaps a short stint in a military prison (for which you might be paid oodles of compensation later on) looks a better bet than acting as your short-lived government’s obedient murderer?
It seems very sensible to avoid writing and broadcasting something that would make the situation worse. And the message has hardly been hidden, has it – in fact the lecturer has done a good job of making sure his view has been broadcast more widely than the R4 broadcast would have achieved.
The BBC is liable for what its presenters produce. Even Thought for Day is checked before it goes out. Someone I know used to be one of the providers of the daily platitude, and it annoyed her.