Britain’s public broadcaster the BBC has apologized for editing Donald Trump’s speech to appear as if he was advocating violence to fend off threats of legal action from the US president.
However, the broadcaster denied the basis of the defamation complaint in a statement on Thursday.
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According to the BBC, chairman Sameer Shah sent a letter to the White House saying that Trump and the BBC were “sorry” about how Trump’s speech was edited in a documentary on current affairs program Panorama.
The broadcaster added that it has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary on any platform.
The BBC said: “The BBC deeply regrets the way the video clip was edited, but strongly disagrees that the defamation claim has merit.”
A third-party production company created the documentary film Trump: A Second Chance?, which stitches together three quotes from two parts of Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, speech.
However, the two sections of the speech were delivered nearly an hour apart. Critics claimed that the documentary had separate lines edited to appear as one single quote, in which Trump urged his supporters to march together and “fight like hell.”
The clipped section included a section in which President Trump said he wanted his supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
After Trump’s speech, thousands of his supporters marched to the Capitol and planned to storm the building in an apparent attempt to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost.
The documentary “Trump: A Second Chance?” aired days before the 2024 presidential election, which Trump won.
Mr Trump’s lawyers had asked the BBC to withdraw the Panorama program, apologize to the president and adequately compensate him for the damage caused, or face a lawsuit seeking at least $1 billion in damages.
They accused the documentary of containing “false, defamatory, derogatory, misleading, or inflammatory statements” about President Trump.
The Telegraph recently leaked accusations of “institutional bias” at the BBC, further fueling the controversy.
Director-general Tim Davie resigned on Sunday, along with news director Deborah Turness, saying the scandal was damaging the BBC.
“As CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, this responsibility rests with me,” Mr Turness said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Mr Davie used his resignation to stress that the BBC “continues to be hailed as the gold standard” in journalism.
In his farewell, he wrote: “Overall the BBC has done well, but there have been some mistakes. As director-general, I must take ultimate responsibility.”
The allegations at the BBC put the broadcaster at risk of having to use money paid by viewers to compensate the US president for its own mistakes.
Critics say this could hand the BBC’s critics even more ammunition as more people cancel their annual subscription payments.
Legal experts say Mr Trump will face difficulties in pursuing legal action against the BBC in the UK or US. They said the BBC would be able to show that no harm was done to Mr Trump because he was ultimately elected president in 2024.
The deadline to bring suit in British courts, where defamation damages rarely exceed 100,000 pounds ($132,000), expired more than a year ago. The documentary was not aired in the United States, so it would be difficult to show that the American public disrespected him because they didn’t get to see the show.
Although many legal experts have dismissed the president’s claims against the media as having little merit, the president has won several favorable settlements against U.S. media companies and may seek to use the BBC’s failure to potentially reward charities of his choice.
Trump has previously filed and settled lawsuits with two major U.S. broadcasters, ABC and CBS. ABC agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit, and CBS owner Paramount agreed to pay $16 million over claims of biased editing, although legal experts questioned the merits of Trump’s claims.
