Trump to sue BBC for compensation after TV doco edit
Donald Trump says he will sue the BBC next week after it apologized but refused to pay him compensation for the edited version of his 2021 speech broadcast by Panorama.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, the US president said: “Probably sometime next week, we will be suing them for between one billion dollars ($A1.5 billion) and five billion dollars ($A7.7 billion).”
The BBC apologized but said it refused to pay financial compensation.
The company said the inclusion of the speech was an “error of judgement.”
However, Trump’s claims for compensation were rejected after his lawyers threatened to sue the BBC for a billion dollars in damages if the retraction and apology were not published.
Mr Trump’s lawyers had given the BBC until 10pm on Friday to respond.
Earlier in the week, Trump said in an interview on Fox News that the BBC was “defrauding the public” about the arrangement, which made it look as if it was openly urging people to attack the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Separately, Trump told GB News in an interview published on Saturday that he felt an “obligation” to take legal action against the public broadcaster.
“I don’t want to get into lawsuits, but I feel like I have an obligation to do so,” he said.
“That was terrible. If you don’t do this, you can’t stop it from happening again to other people.”
A BBC spokesman said President Samir Shah had sent a personal letter to the White House to apologize for the edit, and the company’s lawyers had written to the president’s legal team.
The spokesman added: “Whilst the BBC sincerely regrets the way the video clip has been edited, we strongly disagree that it is the basis for a libel claim.”
The Panorama scandal led to the resignation of two of the BBC’s most senior executives: director general Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness.
The programme, which aired a week before the 2024 US election results, stitched together two clips to reveal Mr Trump telling the crowd: “We’re going to march to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we’re fighting. We’re fighting like crazy.”
The broadcaster said the Panorama episode Trump: Second Chance will not air. again and posted a retraction on the show’s webpage on Thursday.
The statement included the following: “This program has been reviewed following criticism of how President Donald Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021 was edited.
“During this sequence we showed quotes from different parts of the conversation.
“However, we acknowledge that our editing inadvertently created the impression that we were constantly showing a single portion of the speech rather than excerpts from different points of the speech, creating the false impression that President Trump was directly calling for violent action.
“The BBC wishes to apologize to President Trump for this error of judgment.”
A spokesman added: “The BBC has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary Trump: Second Chance on any BBC platform.”
On Thursday, reports said the BBC faced separate accusations that it misled viewers about Trump’s 2021 Capitol speech more than two years before the Panorama edit was released.
In an episode broadcast in June 2022, Newsnight reportedly played an edited version of his speech, similar to that used on the Panorama programme.
A BBC spokesman said of the new allegations on The Telegraph’s Daily T podcast: “The BBC holds itself to the highest editorial standards. This matter has been brought to our attention and we are now reviewing it.”
