The BBC has issued an apology to US President Donald Trump for a Panorama segment that stitched together parts of his 6 January 2021 speech in a way the corporation says unintentionally suggested he made a direct call for violence. The broadcaster, however, has declined Mr Trump’s demand for monetary compensation and said it will not rebroadcast the 2024 programme.
Trump’s lawyers had threatened to sue for $1bn (£759m) unless the BBC issued a retraction, apology and paid damages. The controversy contributed to the resignations on Sunday of director-general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness.
The BBC said it had contacted the White House for comment and published a correction in its Corrections and Clarifications column on Thursday evening after reviewing criticism of the clip. The corporation accepted that the edit created the misleading impression that a single continuous passage was being shown, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression of a direct call to violent action.
A BBC spokesperson said lawyers for the corporation had responded to the letter from Trump’s legal team and that BBC chair Samir Shah had also written personally to the White House to apologise for the way the speech had been edited. The broadcaster added that, while it deeply regretted the edit, it “strongly disagrees there is a basis for a defamation claim.”
The Panorama clip combined lines from separate moments in Trump’s speech — for example his remark about walking “down to the Capitol” and, more than 50 minutes later, the line “And we fight. We fight like hell.” The programme showed the lines together, and Trump said on Fox News the speech had been “butchered” and that viewers had been “defrauded.”
The BBC said the legal letter it received on Sunday demanded a full retraction, an apology and compensation, with a deadline of 22:00 GMT (17:00 EST) on Friday for a response. In its reply to Trump’s lawyers, the BBC set out five key reasons why it believes it has no legal liability: it did not distribute the Panorama episode in the US and UK iPlayer access was geo-restricted; it argued the programme did not harm Mr Trump, noting he was re-elected shortly after; the edit was intended to shorten a long speech rather than to mislead and was not made maliciously; the clip lasted about 12 seconds within an hour-long programme that included voices supportive of Mr Trump and was not intended to be viewed in isolation; and political opinion and speech on matters of public interest receive strong protection under US defamation law. A BBC insider said staff were confident in the corporation’s legal position.
Separately, the Daily Telegraph published a claim on Thursday about a similar edited clip broadcast on Newsnight in 2022, which also appeared to join separate parts of the 6 January speech and was followed by a presenter voiceover while showing footage from the Capitol riots. Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, speaking on the same programme, said that edit “spliced together” sections of the speech and made it look as if separate lines had been contiguous.
The BBC said it is investigating the new allegation and reiterated that it holds itself to high editorial standards. A spokesman for Mr Trump’s legal team told the Telegraph it was “now clear” the broadcaster had engaged in a pattern of defamatory editing. The row intensified after a leaked internal memo by a former external adviser criticised other aspects of BBC reporting, including coverage of transgender issues and BBC Arabic’s reporting on the Israel–Gaza conflict.
