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The author of the leaked ‘BBC bias’ memo, seized on by President Donald Trump to threaten a billion-dollar lawsuit against the broadcaster, is a right-wing lobbyist whose firm is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by US tech and media giants with close ties to Trump, to whom they have donated millions.
One of them, Oracle, is owned by a Republican Party mega-donor who in November 2020 spoke with Trump aides about delegitimising the US elections – and who is actively seeking to reshape the US media landscape to benefit the President.
The lobbyist, Michael Prescott, was reportedly appointed to the BBC advisory position under the influence of BBC Board member Sir Robbie Gibb, a co-founder and early fundraiser of the pro-Trump TV news station GB News co-owned by hedge fund multimillionaire Paul Marshall. Earlier this year, Marshall called for the BBC to be dismantled.
The revelations raise questions about whether a network of Trump-aligned interests helped engineer the BBC’s worst governance crisis in a decade.
Crisis or Coup?
When President Donald Trump threatened to sue the BBC for a billion dollars over its recent Panorama documentary, he accused the corporation of “malicious defamation” for editing parts of his address on 6 January 2021, the day his supporters stormed the US Capitol.
The row was triggered by The Telegraph’s publication of a 39-page leaked ‘memo’, alleging that the Panorama edit exemplified “progressive bias” across the BBC’s output.
Under intensifying political pressure, BBC chair Samir Shah apologised for what he called an “error of judgment,” shortly after director-general Tim Davie and BBC News chief Deborah Turness resigned in the ensuing crisis.
But the man behind the memo is far from a neutral auditor. Michael Prescott is a right-wing lobbyist working as a managing director for nearly a decade at Hanover Communications, a firm with longstanding Conservative Party ties.
Byline Times can reveal that Hanover Communications has been paid at least half a million dollars by four American media and technology corporations whose founders and executives are closely tied to Donald Trump.
According to official EU and UK lobbying disclosures seen by Byline Times, Prescott’s firm represents Oracle, Apple, Meta and Paramount – a roster that spans the core of Big Tech, US entertainment and news media. The latest filings show payments in the six-figure range for the last financial year, covering both regulatory lobbying in Brussels and political communications in Westminster.
The new evidence suggests that Prescott’s memo lends weight to the concerns of BBC insiders that its use was choreographed as part of a wider attack on the corporation by forces aligned with the US President.
The Pro-Trump Bias of the ‘Neutral’ Sources in the Leaked BBC ‘Prescott Dossier’
Byline Times’ analysis of key sources in the memo about the BBC’s alleged ‘progressive bias’ shows it relied on highly partisan right-wing, Trump-aligned organisations
Oracle and the Emerging Pro-Trump Media Empire
Michael Prescott, author of the BBC memo, has been managing director of Hanover Communications, a major British lobbying firm, since 2017.
Leading the list of American tech giants for which Hanover is lobbying is Oracle, whose billionaire founder Larry Ellison – a major Trump ally and Republican Party megadonor – is spearheading a conservative-leaning US media empire, including being in pole position for the purchase of the US version of TikTok.
On 14 November 2020, the Washington Post reported, Ellison joined a strategy call with Trump aides aimed at overturning the legitimate result of the 2020 US national elections. This was less than a week after Trump experienced stunning defeats in Republican strongholds Arizona and Georgia.
Oracle’s EU filings disclose $115,000-230,000 paid to Hanover Communications International in the last financial year for lobbying on cloud computing, artificial intelligence, data-governance and competition policy – fields where Oracle is vying for multi-billion-euro public-sector contracts and strategic control of government data infrastructure.
Apple, whose CEO Tim Cook personally donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, has pledged a total of $600 billion in investment in the US under pressure from Trump – securing an exemption on tariffs – and is also on the list of donors to his White House ballroom. The firm, which previously donated $1 million in technology support to Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee, is also being represented by Hanover Communications according to EU filings.
In Westminster, the UK Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists confirms Meta Platforms and Paramount Global as current Hanover clients. Both are engaged on broadcast and online-safety legislation, including the Online Safety Act and its implications for content moderation and advertising markets.
These companies operate within Trump’s orbit. Meta donated to Trump’s inaugural fund, while Paramount sits firmly inside Ellison’s media constellation.
Earlier this year, Larry Ellison helped his son David, owner of Skydance Media, acquire Paramount Global, creating Paramount Skydance.
The new conglomerate owns CBS News, where it has shaken things up in line with MAGA priorities, just purchased Bari Weiss’ ‘anti-woke’ Substack outlet The Free Press, and is moving to buy Warner Bros Discovery, the parent of CNN. Viacom (now Paramount) bought Channel 5 on 1 May 2014, and after the 7 Aug 2025 merger with Skydance the parent company’s name became Paramount Skydance.
The BBC’s Attempts to Appease the ‘Right-Wing Coup’ Against It Are Now Seeding Its Own Destruction
By attempting to appease those forces seeking to destroy them, the BBC has helped trigger a crisis that now threatens its very future, argues Adam Bienkov