The Guardian reports:

The BBC has been plunged into a new row over its treatment of Donald Trump, after an academic accused it of censoring his remarks about alleged corruption by the US president.

Rutger Bregman, a Dutch author and historian, said the BBC had removed a “key line” from a flagship address he had been invited to give by the corporation.

Bregman, who is giving the BBC’s prestigious annual Reith Lectures, said his claim that Trump was “the most openly corrupt president in American history” had been taken out. He said he had been told that the decision to remove the accusation was taken at the “highest levels within the BBC”.

“I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture,” he said in a statement. “They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as ‘the most openly corrupt president in American history’.

“This sentence was taken out of a lecture they commissioned, reviewed through the full editorial process, and recorded four weeks ago in front of 500 people in the BBC Radio Theatre.

“I was told the decision came from the highest levels within the BBC.” [Continue reading…]