BBC says sorry to Trump over edited clip but rejects $1bn claim

The BBC has apologised to US President Donald Trump for editing a documentary in a way that made it appear as though he had encouraged violence, but the broadcaster has rejected his demand for compensation.

The apology was published in the BBC’s Corrections and Clarifications section on Thursday evening after the programme came under fire for how Trump’s speech was edited.

In the Panorama documentary titled “Trump: A Second Chance?”, the president was shown saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

However, a leaked internal memo revealed that the clip was an edit taken from two different parts of Trump’s January 2021 speech in Washington DC.

In the full speech, he had also said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

The leaked document was cited in a report by the Telegraph and former adviser Michael Prescott, a development that eventually led to the resignation of BBC director-general Tim Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness.

In a letter sent on Sunday, Trump’s lawyers demanded that the BBC retract the documentary before November 14 or face a lawsuit seeking no less than $1 billion.

BBC said the editing caused the president “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” and threatened legal action unless an apology and compensation were offered.

A BBC spokesperson confirmed that Samir Shah, the BBC chair, sent a personal letter to the White House apologising for the way Trump’s January 6 speech was edited in the programme.

The broadcaster said it has no plans to rebroadcast Trump: A Second Chance? on any of its platforms.

“While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim,” the BBC’s lawyers responded.

The incident has intensified criticism against the BBC board, with critics arguing that the organisation reacted too slowly to the editing error.

The controversy also comes amid rising concerns about the BBC’s alleged “anti-Israel bias” in its Arabic service coverage of the Gaza conflict, as well as criticisms of its reporting on transgender issues.

Turness acknowledged earlier that errors were made but maintained that claims of institutional bias within BBC News were “wrong.”

BBC

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