I’ve been thinking about sending Congress a thank-you card.

Because of our elected officials’ dysfunction (most recently on full display during the pointless shutdown), Americans view the media in a slightly better light than our lawmakers.

Congress ranks dead last, according to Gallup, when it comes to the public’s confidence in leading institutions. Yet, the news media is right behind it. And it’s not hard to figure out why.

President Donald Trump regularly calls the legacy press “fake news,” and unfortunately, it often lives up to the insult.

Take, for instance, the recent revelation about a BBC documentary on Trump that aired in Britain in October 2024 ahead of the U.S. election. A leaked internal memo has drawn attention to how it was misleadingly edited.

Trump's 'fight like hell' comment taken out of context

The BBC "Panorama" documentary “Trump: A Second Chance?” took two separate parts of the speech Trump gave on Jan. 6, 2021, (ahead of the Capitol riot) and spliced them together so as to make it sound like he was actively encouraging violence.

At one part of the speech, 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.”

In the documentary, however, Trump appears to say the following: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol … and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

The “fight like hell” comments were made nearly an hour apart from the former remarks.

Obviously, it’s a serious breach of trust to purposely take someone’s words out of context in that way. When the memo detailing what happened became public, consequences were immediate.

BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, and its chief executive of BBC News, Deborah Turness, resigned.

“While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong,” Turness, former president of NBC News, wrote in regard to her resignation.

Unfortunately, instances like this undermine the credibility of the media and confirm for the audience that liberal bias is a deep-seated problem.

That’s why Republicans are much more likely (88%) to have low trust in the legacy media, compared with Democrats (46%). Especially in the past decade, during which Trump has dominated GOP politics, that distrust has grown.

Is the news media starting to wake up? Maybe.

In typical Trump fashion, he’s threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion if the broadcaster doesn’t retract the documentary, among other demands. The BBC apologized to Trump Nov. 13, but it's not willing to pay him for alleged "financial and reputational harm."

Trump has had some recent success in suing other media outlets for both unfair and defamatory content. CBS parent company Paramount paid $16 million to Trump to settle a lawsuit over how CBS News edited an interview with Trump’s Democratic presidential contender, Vice President Kamala Harris, ahead of the election.

Trump also got ABC to settle a defamation lawsuit for $15 million.

In the United States, it’s extremely difficult for a public official like Trump to win a defamation case against the media, as the First Amendment rightly sets a high bar.

The fact that these news organizations are revamping top leadership and settling lawsuits on their own says a lot.

There’s a long way to go for the media to rebuild the public’s trust.

At least, we’re not as bad as Congress.

Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X: @Ingrid_Jacques

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Is Trump right about 'fake news'? BBC is the latest to make stuff up about him. | Opinion

Reporting by Ingrid Jacques, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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