LONDON — The BBC apologized Thursday to United States President Donald Trump for a misleading edit of his January 6, 2021, speech, but said there is no basis for a defamation claim despite the president’s threat of a one billion dollar lawsuit.
BBC Chair Samir Shah sent a personal letter to the White House expressing regret for the edited version of Trump’s speech, which appeared in a “Panorama” documentary aired days before the 2024 US presidential election. The edit combined portions of the speech delivered nearly an hour apart.
In a formal retraction, the broadcaster acknowledged that the edited sequence created the impression of a single continuous statement and may have suggested that Trump directly called for violent action.
The BBC said it does not plan to rebroadcast the documentary.
Trump’s lawyer had demanded an apology, a full retraction, and compensation, claiming the edit caused overwhelming financial and reputational harm. The legal letter gave the BBC until Friday to respond. The BBC’s news report on the apology said it refused to pay compensation.
The documentary, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?”, was produced by a third-party company. It stitched together three quotes from two separate moments in Trump’s 2021 speech, omitting parts in which he told supporters to protest peacefully.
The fallout led to the resignation of Director General Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness, who said the controversy was damaging the institution and that accountability rested with them.
Legal experts say Trump faces significant obstacles should he pursue the case in either the United Kingdom or the United States. They note that the deadline to file a defamation claim in England expired more than a year ago and that the documentary did not air in the US, making it difficult to prove harm.
Although analysts consider most of Trump’s media-related legal threats to have limited merit, he has secured sizable settlements in other cases. In July, Paramount agreed to pay 16 million dollars to settle a lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, which Trump said was edited to improve her presentation. The settlement came as the Federal Communications Commission, led by a Trump-appointed chair, investigated Paramount during its pending merger with Skydance Media.
Last year, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to resolve a defamation case after anchor George Stephanopoulos inaccurately stated that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. A jury found him liable for sexual abuse.
The BBC said it is also reviewing a report that its “Newsnight” program made a similar edit to Trump’s January 6 speech in 2022.
Edgardo Hernal started college at UP Diliman and received his BA in Economics from San Sebastian College, Manila, and Masters in Information Systems Management from Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University in Oak Brook, IL. He has 25 years of copy editing and management experience at Thomson West, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters.
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