The BBC has apologised to US President Donald Trump for a Panorama episode that spliced parts of his 6 January 2021 speech together, but has rejected his demand for compensation. The corporation said the edit had given “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action” and said it would not show the 2024 programme again.
Lawyers for Trump had threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn (£759m) in damages unless the corporation issued a retraction, apology and compensation. The fallout from the scandal led to the resignations of BBC director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness on Sunday.
BBC News has approached the White House for comment. The apology came hours after a second similarly edited clip, broadcast on Newsnight in 2022, was revealed by the Daily Telegraph.
In its Corrections and Clarifications section, published on Thursday evening, the BBC said the Panorama programme had been reviewed after criticism of how Trump’s speech had been edited. “We accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action,” it said.
Lawyers for the BBC have written to President Trump’s legal team in response to a letter received on Sunday, a BBC spokesperson said. “BBC chair Samir Shah has separately sent a personal letter to the White House making clear to President Trump that he and the corporation are sorry for the edit of the president’s speech on 6 January 2021, which featured in the programme,” they added. They also said: “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.”
In Trump’s original speech he said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.” More than 50 minutes later he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell.” In the Panorama programme the clip shows him as saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.” Speaking to Fox News, Trump said his speech had been “butchered” and the way it was presented had “defrauded” viewers.
The BBC received the letter from Trump’s lawyers on Sunday. It demanded a “full and fair retraction” of the documentary, an apology, and that the BBC “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused”. It set a deadline of 22:00 GMT (17:00 EST) on Friday for the corporation to respond.
In its letter to Trump’s legal team, the BBC set out five main arguments for why it does not think it has a case to answer. First, it said the BBC did not have the rights to, and did not, distribute the Panorama episode on its US channels. When the documentary was available on BBC iPlayer, it was restricted to viewers in the UK. Secondly, it said the documentary did not cause Trump harm, noting he was re-elected shortly after. Thirdly, it said the clip was not designed to mislead but was an edit to shorten a long speech, and that the edit was not done with malice. Fourthly, it said the clip was never meant to be considered in isolation: it was 12 seconds within an hour-long programme that also contained many voices in support of Trump. Finally, it said opinion on a matter of public concern and political speech is heavily protected under defamation laws in the US. A BBC insider said that internally there is a strong belief in the case the corporation has put forward and in its defence.
Fresh claim of misleading edit
Earlier on Thursday, the BBC was accused of another misleading edit of Trump’s 6 January 2021 speech, from a Newsnight programme in 2022. That edit showed Trump as saying: “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 fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.” This was followed by a voiceover from presenter Kirsty Wark saying “and fight they did” over footage from the Capitol riots.
Responding to the clip on the same programme, former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney — who later became a critic of Trump — said the video had “spliced together” Trump’s speech. “That line about ‘we fight and fight like hell’ is actually later in the speech and yet your video makes it look like those two things came together,” he said.
In response to Thursday’s story in the Telegraph, a BBC spokesperson said the corporation holds itself to the “highest editorial standards” and the matter was being looked into. A spokesman for Trump’s legal team told the Telegraph it was “now clear that BBC engaged in a pattern of defamation against President Trump”.
Concerns over the Panorama documentary emerged when a leaked internal memo, written by a former independent external adviser to the corporation’s editorial standards committee, was published by the Telegraph. Among other things, the document also criticised the BBC’s reporting of trans issues and BBC Arabic’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war.
