The World and Everything in It: November 20, 2025

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The US has built up its military presence in the Caribbean with eyes on Venezuela and drug cartels. We’ll talk about it.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also, more documents from the Epstein files are set to be released, so what’s next?

And for young doctors, Match Day brings excitement, but the years that follow are grueling.

FITZGERALD: Applicants cannot negotiate pay. They must accept whatever slot the logarithm hands them or whatever terms they are given.

And the BBC gets caught red handed, commentary from Cal Thomas.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, November 20th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown Good morning!

REICHARD: Time for news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Epstein files bill signing » President Trump last night signed a bill into law that compels the Department of Justice to release its case files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Congress passed that bill almost unanimously this week after a yearslong push by survivors of Epstein’s abuse.

House Speaker Mike Johnson voted for the bill, but expressed concerns that it may not contain enough protections for those survivors. But Senate Majority John Thune said Wednesday:

THUNE: I trust the judgment of the Justice Department to ensure that whatever files they release, protect the victims.

The legislation does allow for some redactions, for victims' identities and classified national security material.

The president’s signature starts the clock on a 30-day countdown for the DOJ to produce what’s commonly known as the Epstein files.

Those must include all Epstein-related investigative files, plus its internal communications about him, his associates, and his 2019 death.

U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum / major non-NATO ally » President Trump says the partnership between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is one of the most consequential in the world, and he said the White House is now formally recognizing that.

He told a gathering of business leaders at a U.S.-Saudi Investment Summit:

TRUMP:  We officially designated the Kingdom yesterday as the major non-NATO ally. That's a big deal. That's actually a very big deal.

That will give the kingdom faster access to American military hardware, and the president says the U.S. plans to sell plenty of that to Saudi Arabia, including tanks, and cutting-edge F35 fighter jets.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has also pledged a trillion dollars in new investments in the US.

 President Trump also said Wednesday that he’s prepared to help the Saudis bring an end to the brutal civil war in Sudan.

TRUMP: It was not on my, uh, my charts to be involved in that. I thought it was just something that was crazy and outta control, but I just see how important that is to you.

The fighting for control of Sudan has killed more than 40,000 people and created the world's worst humanitarian crisis with over 14 million people displaced.

U.S. trade deficit decreases » A new report from the Commerce Department shows the U.S. trade deficit fell sharply in August. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: The report was delayed for more than seven weeks due to the federal government shutdown.

But the numbers show the gap between what the United States buys from other countries and what it sells them fell by nearly 24% to $60 billion in August.

That was down from more than $78 billion in July. Imports fell by more than 5%.

Whether the president’s tariffs are an overall net positive for the economy is a matter hotly debated in Washington.

But a drop in the trade deficit is good for GDP and economic growth numbers—at least in the short term, because foreign products are subtracted from the nation's gross domestic product.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Hearing on congressional insider trading » On Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats were on the same page for a change. Leaders of the House Administration Committee agreed: Something more needs to be done to stop what they say is effectively legalized insider trading in the nation’s capital.

The top Democrat on the committee, Joseph Morelle:

MORELLE: All over Washington from the White House to the Supreme Court. Corruption and self-dealing are a persistent problem.

In 2012, Congress passed the Stock Act requiring members to publicly disclose their trades. But Morelle says that law is not strong enough.

And the Republican Chairman of the committee, Bryan Steil, agrees.

STEIL: I believe we have an opportunity here to make meaningful reforms and restore the public's trust. The American people should be confident that lawmakers are working for them, not seeking office to financially benefit themselves.

A bipartisan group of House members is pushing legislation to bar members of Congress and their direct family members from owning or trading individual stocks.

Several reports show members in both parties profiting from well-timed trades or beating markets’ overall performances. There's even an app where investors can connect their trades with a member of congresses, also known as the “Pelosi Tracker.”

Israel latest » More Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon.

The IDF released video Wednesday of what it says was an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon against weapons storage facilities used by the Hezbollah terror group.

The IDF says Hezbollah deliberately placed facilities in populated areas in an effort to use civilians as human shields.

Israeli residents living near Israel’s northern border say they’re worried. One resident says that unless Hezbollah is disarmed:

PERRY: …then the war will come back here, because otherwise no one will stop them, and they keep on thinking about how to destroy Israel.

And there was renewed fighting in Gaza. Hospital officials there say at least 21 Palestinians were killed when Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza City, Khan Younis and the Muwasi area.

The Israeli military says those strikes were responding to militants who opened fire on Israeli forces. No Israeli soldiers were hurt.

DOJ on Ryan Wedding indictments » The Department of Justice has announced sweeping new charges against a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder, who authorities say built a new career, as a drug cartel kingpin.

FBI Director Kash Patel:

PATEL: Ryan Wedding is a modern-day iteration of Pablo Escobar. He's a modern-day iteration of El Chapo Guzman, this Justice Department and this FBI will work with our Canadian counterparts and the government officials across the world to bring him to justice.

Prosecutors say Wedding operates a major global drug-trafficking organization, which has been running semi-trucks with cocaine from Mexico to the tune of 60 metric tons per year.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli:

ESSAYLI: This is the number one cocaine drug trafficking kingpin in Canada, trafficking over a billion dollars a year in cocaine. He uses my district, the Southern District, or Southern California, essentially as his hub.

Authorities also accuse Wedding of ordering the murder of a witness in Colombia who planned to testify against him.

The US government is offering a reward of up to $15 million dollars for information leading to his arrest.

The Justice Department says it has also indicted dozens of Wedding’s associates.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: a US carrier group is now in Venezuela’s neighborhood, and it's got Maduro’s attention. Plus, how med-students become doctors may be changing.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYNRA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 20th of November.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad to have you along today. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up on The World and Everything in It: Increasing pressure on Venezuela.

On Sunday, the U.S. Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group arrived in the Caribbean, putting it close enough to perform interior strikes on Venezuela. It’s part of a recent U.S. military buildup in the area. It comes amid more than 20 attacks on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

BROWN: At the same time, President Donald Trump has signified openness to diplomatic talks with the country’s leader, Nicholas Maduro, who faces charges of narcoterrorism in the U.S. Maduro has said the U.S. is fabricating a war against him.

Joining us now to talk about what the recent military moves mean is Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery. He is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

REICHARD: Admiral Montgomery, good morning.

MARK MONTGOMERY, GUEST: Thank you for having me.

REICHARD: Well, let's talk about the carrier group that was recently moved into the Caribbean. Where was it previously, and why.

MONTGOMERY: So previously, it was in the eastern Mediterranean. It was four months into a six, a nominal six month deployment. It was there as part of an American presence in the Middle East in support of defending Israel. Again, you know, some of its ships would be used to defend Israel against inbound ballistic missiles. But also, you know, it could swing down through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea, and eventually in the Arabian Gulf, if necessary. It can also swing up and do support to issues in Europe. But I think it was mostly about Israel and the Middle East. It terminated that deployment, took about a week to come across the Mediterranean as it did some logistics work, and then a week to get from the Mediterranean down to the Caribbean.

REICHARD: What was the military presence in the Caribbean from the United States side before this?

MONTGOMERY: So historically, in terms of operational deployments, one ship, maximum. On occasion, two ships, as they turned over each other doing either law enforcement related Counter Narcotics operations or training and exercising with a partner in Central or South America. So very, very limited. Over the last month, that's plussed up to an amphibious task force with three ships and up to 4,000 Marines and three or four large surface combatants. Those are destroyers that were there, and now it's been joined by this aircraft carrier strike group, which is itself an aircraft carrier, a Carrier Air Wing, and three to four large surface combatants or destroyers.

REICHARD: So what is the goal of this current approach, moving personnel and ships into the area? Is it merely intimidation?

MONTGOMERY: Well, I mean three things. I'd say, one, there's certainly some kind of performative nature to it, intimidation to try to convince Maduro to just grab, you know, find a jet that works, get a flight to Spain, get refueled, get a flight to Russia and take a dacha next to Hafez Al Assad, the former leader of Syria. Part of it's a pressure campaign, but the second part has been a system of attacking small boats that are allegedly shipping narcotics out of Venezuela. And then on the eastern side, in the eastern Pacific as well, but in the Caribbean, eastern Pacific, and in theory, taking what I presume is mostly cocaine to either Europe or the United States. And then there's a third element to this, which is we declared the cartel he allegedly leads a foreign terrorist organization that's going to open up the factories where cocoa paste is turned into cocaine. It's going to open up that infrastructure to strikes by U.S. assets that's not uncommon for us against foreign terrorist organizations.

REICHARD: And then, how has Venezuela responded to these recent moves by the U.S?

MONTGOMERY: Well, I think their response is generally performative as well, because there's a complete mismatch in the military forces here. There's not much they can do about our Navy. They have a very limited, you know, basically, one frigate that gets underway, and if it's smart, it'll stay inside territorial waters. One submarine that might be able to get underway. If it's smart, it'll stay inside territorial waters. And they have two types of aircraft, some souloid 30s they got from Russia. And then certainly they pose a minor, you know, some threat to the United States, although one I think they can easily handle. And then some aging F-16s that we transferred, I think, before to the Chavez time. So they have an a fairly aging air and naval component, and that's how you would counter these forces. So really, it's just performative, you know, calling up reserves and things like that. What danger do you see in all of this happening? Maduro is not the elected leader of Venezuela, you know, the opposition. You know, whether it's the actual person who ran Gonzalez or the or Maria Machado. You know, they're the elected, they're the opposition that’s actually the appropriately elected government. I don't believe Donald Trump is about regime change, but he is tired of Maduro. So you know, wanna you know, he could easily try a maximum pressure campaign to get him to flee. If that doesn't work, eventually target the narco infrastructure. So the narco cartels convince Maduro to just leave, or, you know, kill him, or strike some of their military assets. So the military convinces him to leave, or they kill him. None of those are great solutions, and you know, we have to be very careful here. There is a democratic elected leader, but you can't, you know, once you start the process of regime change, you know, you can't just avert your eyes, you know, we'll own a little bit of that. So we have to be very careful.

REICHARD: Final question, Admiral, is there anything about this story that you think the public needs to know, and perhaps it isn't being reported widely enough?

MONTGOMERY: Well, I think, look, I don't like cocaine deliveries from Venezuela coming to the United States, but the President says things like, fentanyl has killed 500,000 Americans. That's true. over the last decade. He also says Nicolas Maduro and Venezuela deal in drugs. That's true, but those facts can't be stitched together, because the reality is, fentanyl is a precursor. The precursor agents are coming from China into Mexico, where they're added into other drugs or processed and either added into other drugs or sent pure to the United States. That is the fentanyl drug trail. And we are striking the cocaine drug trail. And I just think, you know, we’ve got to be very careful mixing these things. Fentanyl is a drug that is killing—has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. If the president were truly serious about fentanyl, we'd be holding China accountable and Mexico accountable. This Venezuela issue is a separate issue with cocaine, and I certainly don't like it, but I think we should handle that through law enforcement.

REICHARD: Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery is a senior fellow with the foundation for defense of democracies, Admiral, thank you so much.

MONTGOMERY: Thank you for having me.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Up next, releasing the Epstein files.

A bill ordering the Department of Justice to release a trove of documents about Jeffrey Epstein hit President Trump’s desk on Wednesday…after sailing through the House and Senate.

What happens when the bill becomes law?

Washington Reporter Carolina Lumetta has the story.

CHAIR: The gentlelady from Georgia is recognized for five minutes.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: This week Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene walked over to the Democrat side of the aisle to open the vote on the Epstein files discharge petition.

GREENE: I proudly rise today in a bipartisan effort to release the Epstein files finally after five administrations have covered it up.

Greene was one of only four Republicans to trigger the petition, but after it cleared the procedural hurdle, nearly every GOP lawmaker in both the House and the Senate joined. It now forces the Justice Department to release hundreds of thousands of documents based on decades of investigations into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The millionaire was estimated to have abused more than 1,000 women in a sex trafficking ring and was connected to scores of politicians, wealthy elites, and world leaders. He was found dead in his federal prison cell in 2019.

GREENE: You want to know what the Epstein files represents? The coverup represents to average Americans? it represents the failures of the federal government and Congress to the American people. And that is what people rose up about in 2024.

It was a long road to get here. Back in February, the White House gave conservative social media influencers bulky white binders titled “Epstein Files: Phase 1.” But the binders were full of previously released information or redacted pages. Attorney General Pam Bondi later said there was nothing more to show, and President Trump told America to move on from Epstein:

TRUMP: He's dead for a long time. He was never a big factor in terms of life. I don't understand what the interest or what the fascination is.

But many in Trump’s base continued to demand public disclosure. So in July, the House Oversight Committee launched its own probe into the Epstein investigations and subpoenaed the DOJ for its documents. Since then, more than 50,000 have been released to the committee, which has slowly begun to publish them online. But Trump still opposed the effort and the Republicans who backed it. Reporters asked him about it in the Oval Office in July.

TRUMP: It's all been a big hoax. It's perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans and foolish Republicans fall into the net. And so they try and do the Democrats' work.

Based on the documents released so far, Epstein and Trump did have a friendship in the 1990s, with Epstein visiting Mar-a-Lago many times for parties. But the two broke off their friendship in the mid-2000s, Trump says, because Epstein was poaching his staff. Some documents, leaked by committee Democrats, allegedly show that Trump drew a lewd picture in a birthday book for Epstein in 2003. Trump says the document is fake, and denies any wrongdoing or knowledge of the trafficking ring. In a news conference last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the administration’s actions thus far.

LEAVITT: This administration has done more with respect to transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein than any administration ever. In fact, this administration, the Department of Justice, has turned over tens of thousands of documents to the American people. We are cooperating and showing support for the House Oversight Committee.

But some lawmakers wanted to speed up the process…with a discharge petition. The procedure, requiring 218 signatures, forces a floor vote on the bill and bypasses the standard committee process. After months of delays and debates, Democratic Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva of Arizona added the decisive signature to the petition last week.

Days before it passed, Trump went after the handful of Republicans who joined Democrats to sign the petition. He pressured Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert and Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene to rescind their signatures, but they refused to back down. Then, President Trump reversed course in his opposition to release the files and said he would sign the bill. Here he is in the Oval Office last week.

TRUMP: I would let the Senate look at it, let anybody look at it, but don't talk about it too much, because honestly, I don’t want to take it away from us.

The president added that he does not want ongoing discussion about Epstein to distract from his administration’s achievements, including peace and trade deals.

TRUMP: What I just don't want Epstein to do is detract from the great success of the Republican Party.

The bill passed the House by 427 votes to 1. Republican Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana was the only nay vote. On Tuesday night, the Senate unanimously agreed to automatically pass the House bill as soon as it arrived with no amendments. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer filed the unanimous consent request. While speaking to reporters after, he was asked why Democrats did not pursue similar legislation years ago.

REPORTER: Was it just that it was an open investigation and they didn’t want to tip their–

SCHUMER: Look, the difference is real. President Trump campaigned on this, he promised to get this done. He’s the one who backed off on this, period. Yes.

The bill requires the DOJ to provide the documents on Epstein’s crimes and death in prison in a downloadable and searchable format with redactions only for victim privacy and any illegal material like evidence of child pornography. It must do so within 30 days of becoming law. Survivors of Epstein’s abuses joined a news conference at the Capitol on Tuesday.

JONES: The world should see the files to know who Jeffrey Epstein was and how the system catered to him and failed us.

Jena-Lisa Jones says Epstein abused her when she was 14 years old. She voted for Trump in 2024 and called on him this week not to make the files political.

JENA-LISA JONES: Sexual abuse is not a Republican issue. This it is not a Republican or a Democratic issue. It is also not a hoax. We are here as American survivors of a man who used his wealth and power to hurt young girls and women.

But there is one snag to the pending release. Last week, Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate several banks and high-level Democrats who are mentioned in what’s been released already as having affiliations with Epstein. That list includes former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, JP Morgan Chase & Company, and former President Bill Clinton. The DOJ is allowed to withhold documents that pertain to pending investigations, including the Epstein files that Congress voted to release.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Are you stressing over Thanksgiving meal prep for next week? Well, no need, says a chef on The Today Show. Jernard Wells is executive chef at Cornbread and Butter restaurant in Grayson, Georgia:

WELLS: Instead of focusing on perfection, this year, focus on creating some great flavors and memories. This is what it's all about here.

I love this guy!

Wells demonstrated his crowd-pleasing “turkey bites” — just marinated diced turkey breast. No need to wrestle with a big old bird or a dangerous carving knife!

WELLS: Then we just drop these bad boys right into the fryer. You want to keep an eye on it, because you don’t want your beautiful nuggets to get all dark.

Watch those nuggets! And the most important ingredient?

WELLS: It’s like we say at Cornbread and Butter. You want all the love in every dish!

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: All the love!

REICHARD: It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, November 20th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Residency.

It’s what turns a medical school graduate into a licensed, practicing physician. Each year some 50,000 new doctors begin residency training in hospitals and healthcare centers across the country.

BROWN: The system connects residents to particular programs, from primary care to neurosurgery. It’s been in place since the 1950s. But some think it’s time for a change. WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson brings us this report.

KIM HENDERSON: Medical students from all over the United States anticipate— and agonize over— Match Day.

STUDENT: I’m right hanging over the edge and I can see the drop…

It’s the day they find out where they’ll spend the next 3 to 7 years of their lives while they train as residents.

MONTAGE: Definitely emotional but all good feelings, all good feelings. My heart’s pounding, my palms’ a little sweaty, I matched neurosurgery at Emory! I’m going to Duke! [cheers]

Olivia Orndorff is with the National Resident Matching Program. It’s a non-profit that helps U.S. med students land the residencies they want by using a mathematical algorithm.

ORNDORFF: In this country, you can decide if you want to be an orthopedic surgeon, if you want to be an internal medicine or if you want to go into emergency medicine…

The only way a match happens is if it's on both of the rank order lists: the med student’s list and the residency program’s list.

ORNDORFF: Applicants will come in, and they'll rank the programs they want. Programs will rank the applicants that they want.

The matching process is designed to be a fair way to distribute residents across different specialties and hospitals. Its founders even won a 2012 Nobel Prize for the system.

But these days, it’s getting some pushback. But it’s a system that comes with a cost to the students. And even Congress is taking note.

AUDIO: [Sound of gavel]

Earlier this year, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel launched an investigation into the medical residency matching system. The big concern is Congress’ 2004 decision to shield the “Match” from antitrust laws.

CHAIRMAN: As a result, there's no competition now, and it decides the fate of more than 50,000 residents and fellows each year. Applicants cannot negotiate pay. They must accept whatever slot the logarithm hands them or whatever terms they are given.

That’s U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald. He gave hard numbers at a subcommittee hearing to show why fair pay for residents is an issue—especially in the midst of a growing doctor shortage.

CHAIRMAN: Last year the average first-year resident earned just $66,000. That's roughly $60,000 less than a physician assistant or $100,000 less than a nurse practitioner despite working long hours and holding more advanced credentials.

And it’s not just the pay. An 80-hour workweek is the norm in graduate medical training programs around the country.

Residency is tough, and once a match is made, there’s no negotiating.

Recent research shows that residencies are often too hard on the trainees' own health. And programs are responding. There’s a new focus on resident well-being and the training environment as a whole.

NUTHALAPATY: There's a lot of education now that we're required to do with our residents along this vein, helping them to recognize indicators of poor well-being, a lack of energy, a lack of sleep, stress . . .

Dr. Francis Nuthalapaty is an expert in medical education. He says residency programs should emphasize a good environment and a good work experience. They should offer spaces for sleep when needed. Have ample food on site. Provide transportation for residents too exhausted to drive safely.

NUTHALAPATY: So these are all things that I would say previously were not emphasized at all. You are just kind of there to work, and it is what it is, all of us have to go through the gauntlet. Versus now where we recognize those issues. We educate them and try to create a more healthy work environment.

Nuthalapaty believes there’s more to residency than medical training, though. It’s a time of professional identity formation.

NUTHALAPATY: As medical students, they're learning a lot, but they haven't really grasped what it is to be a doctor. That's what happens during residency training.

He believes that’s critical. Lack of identity formation could be a factor contributing to the doctor shortage America is experiencing.

NUTHALAPATY: Especially since the COVID era, is this concept of moral injury, where it’s really a loss of this idea of calling and mission in terms of the practice of medicine, and a shift towards really more of a profit based motive. And really a loss of physician identity. So I think that has driven a lot of attrition from the field of medicine as a whole.

Could changing the residency matching system affect this shift? Maybe. More flexibility for graduates could lead to better residency experiences. And longer careers of service to patients.

Nuthalapaty says he can remember when it was common for his senior colleagues to work well into their 70s.

NUTHALAPATY: They loved it. It was who they were. It was their identity. I would say now, it's a rarity to see people practicing medicine that long, and I think it's just a sign of how much just the whole field of medicine has changed, in this country especially.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson.

REICHARD: To read the full print feature story on the doctor shortage, look for the December issue of WORLD Magazine...and we’ll post a link to the digital version of the story in the transcript of this episode.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Last week, the BBC apologized to President Donald Trump for a program it aired last year that spliced parts of his January 6, 2021 speech together. In an internal memo the broadcaster admitted the edit made it look and sound like the president was urging his followers to violently attack the Capitol.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Besides the apology, the BBC committed it would not show the program again but it is refusing to pay any damages to the President. Lawyers for Donald Trump have threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion dollars. WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says the event is just another example of how far the BBC has fallen.

CAL THOMAS: Two friends email from London about the editing scandal that led to the resignation of two top officials from the British Broadcasting Corporation. One emailer says the first “B” in BBC should stand for bias—reminding me of what some conservatives called CNN during the 1990s, the Clinton News Network. The second writer says the edit was only—in his words—“a mistake.”

It wasn't a mistake. It was deliberate and it was made with the intention of having viewers accept their desired negative opinion of Donald Trump. In another country and in another era, this would be called propaganda. If this sounds like the editing of the CBS 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris to make her sound articulate, it should. Both flowed from the same liberal worldview.

Kudos to the London Daily Telegraph for practicing real journalism and exposing the edit of the Trump speech.

During World War II the BBC was a trusted source of information. It sent coded information to the French resistance and took other actions in support of the war effort. This was accurately depicted in the film The Longest Day. In recent years, the BBC has seen its level of trust decline.

A survey conducted by David Pickering of The Conversation news organization notes that "Trust in the BBC is heavily conditioned by political identity." The survey of more than 11,000 people in the UK shows “striking differences between how people with left-wing and right-wing party affiliations” view the broadcaster.

The editing incident isn't the first time the credibility of the BBC has been called into question. Several internal studies have found the organization to have reported unfairly on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Those studies changed nothing as the pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel bias has continued. It is the same when it comes to their reporting on so-called "climate change."

A Wall Street Journal editorial reports that the BBC has had an LGBTQ desk within its London headquarters to make sure stories are favorable about transgender issues. The Journal notes that stories that do not reflect the BBC's "liberal orthodoxy" are routinely suppressed.

On top of that, UK streamers and owners of television sets pay for the privilege. Residents are required to pay an annual TV license fee of nearly 175 pounds—or about $230 dollars per year for a color license…and about a third of that for a black-and-white license. It is a compulsory payment used primarily to fund the BBC's television, radio and online services.

Even with that funding, viewers must still watch endless commercials…though many are more entertaining and creative than the programs themselves.

Efforts by some conservative members of Parliament to eliminate the TV license fee have failed. As in America, politicians are reluctant to give up money.

Tim Davie, the now-resigned director general of the BBC is fighting back against what he calls the “weaponization” of criticism. He said in a statement that the BBC needs to stand up for its journalism…arguing: “This narrative will not just be given by our enemies. It's our narrative. We own things.”

Right there you have the reason so much of the media in the UK and the U.S. are held in low regard. He’s not taking responsibility…he’s hunkering down. The BBC thinks it “owns things,” instead of exercising a responsibility to serve the people fairly and accurately. As with other exposures of bias, I suspect little will change within the BBC. It should follow the example of the new president of CBS News… and begin hiring reporters with a conservative worldview who can report conservative ideas fairly and accurately.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet is back for our weekly Culture Friday conversation. And Collin Garbarino has a review of the film Wicked 2. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” —Ephesians 2:8-10

Go now in grace and peace.

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