From Trump to Hasina: BBC scandals unmasked as Yunus’ smear campaign goes global

In a blistering exposé of alleged media manipulation, Awami League (AL) leaders have accused the BBC of deliberate bias and selective editing in a July 2025 documentary targeting former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, framing it as part of a broader propaganda campaign orchestrated by Muhammad Yunus’ interim regime to delegitimise the ousted government and silence opposition voices.

The claims, amplified by Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy and former State Minister Mohammad Ali Arafat, come amid escalating tensions ahead of AL’s banned “Dhaka Lockdown” on November 13, with critics warning that such smears are designed to justify crackdowns on AL supporters.

Joy, Hasina’s son and her former ICT adviser, ignited the firestorm in an X post on November 9, revealing that BBC Director General Tim Davie and News Division Chief Executive Deborah Turness had resigned following leaks of internal memos exposing “multiple instances of out-of-context editing of videos and recordings, and biased reporting.”

He directly linked this to the BBC’s handling of Hasina, stating, “They have done the same with my mother, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.” The resignations, reportedly triggered by a critical memo admitting the BBC had misleadingly edited a 2021 speech by then-US President Donald Trump to falsely imply he incited the January 6 Capitol riot, underscore a pattern of institutional deceit that AL claims has now engulfed coverage of Bangladesh’s 2024 uprising.

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Arafat, a vocal AL defender and ex-information minister, escalated the accusations in a detailed statement, demanding an internal BBC probe into its BBC Eye team’s “manipulation” of a leaked audio clip in the July 9 documentary, titled “Ex-Bangladesh Leader Authorised Deadly Crackdown, Leaked Audio Suggests.”

The film, which Arafat branded a “selective narrative that distorts reality,” cherry-picks a single sentence from the purported recording—allegedly Hasina’s voice—to suggest she ordered executions during the student protests. “There’s no ‘smoking gun’ here,” Arafat asserted. “The BBC isolates one phrase, omits the full context, and imposes a prejudiced interpretation to demonise Hasina and the Awami League.”

Echoes of Al Jazeera: A Pattern of Distorted Narratives

The BBC scandal mirrors a similar controversy just weeks earlier involving Al Jazeera‘s July 24 documentary, which Arafat slammed as “biased and prejudiced.” Qatar-based Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit repackaged the same unverified audio—first leaked on social media and later amplified by BBC World—as “shocking secret orders” to crush protests, claiming it revealed Hasina’s direct culpability. “Nothing new was disclosed; it was recycled propaganda,” Arafat noted, emphasising that AL has repeatedly denied the clip’s authenticity pending legal verification.

In both cases, the media outlets ignored crucial context: the audio explicitly references an alternative order to *arrest* suspects, distinguishing between peaceful students and armed agitators. “Two distinct instructions for different scenarios,” Arafat explained. The recordings, if genuine, align with Bangladesh’s legal framework, allowing lethal force against threats to state institutions—especially after the government explicitly banned such measures until July 18, 2024, to protect student safety. Al Jazeera and BBC alike omitted Hasina’s voiced concern for protesters at the 1:14 mark, where she explains withholding lethal force precisely to safeguard youths.

This dual assault, AL argues, exemplifies a coordinated “media trial” that whitewashes the uprising’s violent underbelly. The protests, initially a quota reform drive, devolved into anarchy with coordinated attacks on over 400 police stations, the looting of 5,000+ firearms and 600,000 ammunition rounds, and the lynching of dozens of officers.

Yet, neither outlet reported the gruesome Enayetpur massacre on July 17, where 15-17 officers were slaughtered with machetes, their bodies hung from trees and burned, nor the Jatrabari overbridge hangings of two plainclothes policemen on July 19-20, dragged from hiding by mob identifiers using discarded uniforms.

Yunus Regime’s Shadow: Propaganda as Statecraft

AL leaders squarely blame Yunus’s Jamaat-influenced interim government for fueling this narrative war, portraying the documentaries as “planned propaganda” to retroactively justify the 2024 regime change and AL’s October 2025 ban. “The Yunus administration, backed by extremists like Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefazat-e-Islam, is weaponising Western media to erase the Awami League’s legacy of development and stability,” Joy charged.

Since seizing power on August 5, 2024—amid unrecovered looted arms and surging jihadist activity from groups like HuJI-B and Hizb ut-Tahrir—the regime has allegedly courted sympathetic outlets, leaking unverified materials while suppressing counter-narratives.

Arafat highlighted the BBC’s omission of Jatrabari’s extremist hubs: “This area, a dense madrasa corridor, sheltered ‘masterminds’ who orchestrated attacks under student cover. Why no mention of armed mobs storming stations and celebrating false resignation rumours while officers begged for reinforcements that never came?”

Footage scrutinised by AL shows police firing only after army withdrawal and gate-breaching attempts—acts of “instinct and self-preservation” in a collapsed chain of command, not orchestrated massacres. “The Yunus team knows this but feeds distorted clips to BBC and Al Jazeera to portray AL as tyrants, shielding their own anarchy,” he added.

Independent journalists and AL activists echo these concerns, noting the outlets’ failure to cover post-uprising atrocities: coordinated police station raids, journalist murders, and minority pogroms—all while dubbing the violence a “student-led movement against discrimination.” “BBC’s neutrality is a farce; it’s complicit in Yunus’s rewrite of history,” said one Dhaka-based reporter, speaking anonymously amid censorship fears.

A Broader Assault on Truth

This isn’t isolated. Hasina’s October 29 interviews with Reuters, AFP, and The Independent—defending her record and vowing AL’s electoral return—prompted fresh smears, coinciding with the November 13 lockdown call. As Dhaka braces for shutdowns demanding Yunus’ ouster and AL unbanning, Arafat warned: “These documentaries aren’t journalism; they’re regime tools to incite violence against us.”

With numerous arrests already and 7,000 troops drilling, the stakes evoke 1971’s liberation struggle—ironically, the era Hasina invokes to reclaim her party’s mantle.

“Objectivity demands context, not conspiracy,” Arafat concluded. In a nation teetering between democracy and division, the BBC fiasco isn’t just a scandal—it’s a symptom of Yunus’s desperate bid to bury the Awami League’s 15-year legacy of growth, now twisted into villainy by allied propagandists.