The BBC is prepared to formally apologise to Donald Trump as part of its efforts to resolve his billion-dollar legal threat over its editing of one of his speeches, the Guardian understands.
However, figures at the corporation are also minded to be robust in defending its journalism in the face of allegations from Trump that it made “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” about him.
The BBC’s leadership is facing a looming deadline over how to reply to Trump’s legal threat to file a case in a Florida court. It follows the editing of a Trump speech in an edition of Panorama, which was a significant factor in the resignation of director general Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, its head of news.
Trump being the defamation king is really rich considering the trashy all, insults and defamation he hurls on a daily basis at anyone who looks at his sideways. Now he’s using his personal law firm, the Department of Justice, to harass and prosecute his enemies as well.
But here we are. He’s reaching across the pond now to try to bend the BBC to his will and it looks like he’s going to succeed:
The BBC’s top executive, Director-General Tim Davie, and its news CEO, Deborah Turness, resigned Sunday amid a growing scandal over this and other alleged editorial misjudgments.
The issue has become a major story in the U.K. where Prime Minister Keir Starmer told lawmakers at the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session in parliament on Wednesday: “I believe in a strong and independent BBC. Some would rather the BBC didn’t exist … I’m not one of them.” He added, however, that “where mistakes are made they do need to get their house in order.”
Starmer was responding to Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrat party, who asked whether the government would urge the BBC to fight Trump’s lawsuit. Davey said “a great British institution is under attack from a foreign government … Trump has underlined press freedom in America and now he’s trying to do the same here.”
Asked Tuesday night whether he would sue, Trump told Fox News: “Well, I guess I have to you know, why not? Because they defrauded the public, and they’ve admitted it.”
“I think I have an obligation to do it, because you can’t get people, you can’t allow people to do that,” he said, before comparing the action to his lawsuit against CBS for a “60 Minutes” interview with his then-presidential election rival Kamala Harris. CBS paid $16 million to settle the case.
Trump complained that the BBC’s edit of his speech “made it sound radical” when it was “a very calming speech.” The saga centers on a “Panorama” documentary that aired before last year’s election. In it, two parts of the speech were edited together to give the impression that Trump said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
In fact Trump initially said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.” He said later: “And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
It was a bad edit but frankly didn’t change the fact that Trump pumped up that crowd, told them to go to the Capitol and said he’d be there with them. “Fight like hell” is a figure of speech but in that environment it was actual fighting words. If Trump had ever had to stand trial for his attempted coup, I think any jury would have understood exactly what happened there.
The BBC did edit it improperly although it’s very hard to say that it adds up to a billion dollars worth of damages. If the suit goes forward I’d really love to see that trial.
Meanwhile, it appears the BBC is under siege for “liberal bias” generally which just figures. That seems to be the way of things. I watch quite a bit of BBC and it does not have a liberal bias. I don’t think Britain really understands what that might look like. But with Donald Trump on their tails and people at the top resigning, it’s possible they’ll end up pushing it to become more like Fox News. The Murdochs will no doubt be pleased. So will Donald Trump.