BBC’s trademark style: lies, manipulations, provocations In Azerbaijan, this comes as no surprise

What happened was inevitable. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has once again proven to the world its status as a purveyor of fake news, blatant provocations, and immoral lies. This time, the BBC became embroiled in a major scandal over its documentary on the events in Washington in 2021. BBC Director-General Tim Davie and BBC News Head Deborah Turness resigned amid the controversy over the edited speech of Donald Trump in the Panorama programme.

In the film, Trump is shown saying that he will “ fight like hell” alongside the crowd. In reality, on that day, Trump said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.” As we can see, this was a monstrous information provocation, creating the false impression that Trump was calling for violence, when in fact he was urging support for senators and congress members.

Just imagine the sheer audacity and cynical confidence in their own impunity on the part of the BBC, which so easily and casually falsified the speech of the president of a leading global power! Naturally, it was impossible to cover up such a scandal. Davie and Turness were forced to resign. But, what is particularly telling, even this step was accompanied by openly moralising statements.

“Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable. While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision. Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as director general I have to take ultimate responsibility,” Davie wrote in a statement.

As we can see, what is, in fact, a major political scandal revealing the true nature of the BBC’s work is being downplayed as “some mistakes,” while simultaneously claiming that the BBC is merely “not perfect.” It is worth noting that U.S. President Donald Trump has already commented on the BBC Director-General’s resignation on his TruthSocial network, writing: “The TOP people in the BBC, including TIM DAVIE, the BOSS, are all quitting/FIRED, because they were caught ‘doctoring’ my very good (PERFECT!) speech of January 6th”

The American head of state then rightly added: “These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election.” Meanwhile, the U.S. President’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told The Telegraph that the BBC is a “leftist propaganda machine” and “fake news” media.

This is a very accurate assessment of what happened. But in Azerbaijan, no one is surprised by such developments, because in our country we have repeatedly encountered examples of the BBC’s openly false, shameless, and immoral information policies directed against us.

It was the BBC that went out of its way to discredit Azerbaijan both before and during the Eurovision Song Contest held in Baku, as well as during the first-ever European Games. We also recall that the BBC was among the frontrunners in attempting to distort and discredit last year’s COP29 Conference in Baku, which brought together delegates from nearly 200 countries, including heads of several European states and UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

All of these attempts turned out to be nothing more than a classic case of “monkey business” — the Eurovision Song Contest, the European Games, and COP29 were all held with outstanding success, earning Azerbaijan another round of global recognition and respect. And we would not have paid much attention to all these BBC efforts if they had not tried to portray Azerbaijan as being at fault for… liberating its own territories from Armenian occupation.

Let me remind you of one such example — a BBC article titled “How Armenia is trying to build a Silicon Valley in the Caucasus.” In that piece, Armenia was presented as a “victim,” while Azerbaijan and Türkiye were accused of closing borders. The BBC, of course, remained silent about the heinous crimes committed by the occupiers in Karabakh. This was just another example of the BBC’s deceitful information manipulation.

This outlet for disseminating fake news has also blatantly slandered Azerbaijan in an article titled “Schools for Some, Repression for Others: How National Minorities Live in Azerbaijan.” The piece contained numerous false claims about the real situation of national minorities in Azerbaijan. At the same time, it said nothing about the fact that Armenia has long since become a mono-ethnic state.

Finally, even after the end of the 44-day Patriotic War of 2020 and the full restoration of Azerbaijan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity following the one-day anti-terrorist operation in the Karabakh economic region, the BBC website continued to refer to Khankendi as “Stepanakert.” These are classic examples of the BBC’s information deceit, provocations, and manipulations.

In this regard, it is worth recalling that earlier, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan and Head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration, Hikmet Hajiyev, expressed his views on this matter on the social network X. According to him, it is disturbing that the BBC’s charter, which claims the organisation “‘is committed to achieving due impartiality in all its output. This commitment is fundamental to our reputation, our values and the trust of audiences’, is engaged in one-sided and biased aggressive manipulation and promotion of lies…BBC should serve as a platform for all voices, particularly on sensitive topics,” Hajiyev noted in September 2023.

It is now November 2025 — and, as we can see, time has proven Hikmet Hajiyev right. Today, the deceitful and provocative nature of the BBC’s information policy has become evident to the entire world.