US Politics
BBC is ‘determined to fight’ Trump legal challenge, says chair
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The chair of the BBC has said the broadcaster is “determined to fight” Donald Trump after the US president said he would sue the corporation for between $1bn and $5bn over the editing of a 6 January 2021 speech broadcast by Panorama.
In an email to staff, Samir Shah said there is no basis for a defamation case. “There is a lot being written, said and speculated upon about the possibility of legal action, including potential costs or settlements”, he said.
“In all this we are, of course, acutely aware of the privilege of our funding and the need to protect our licence fee payers, the British public.
“I want to be very clear with you – our position has not changed. There is no basis for a defamation case and we are determined to fight this.”
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Asked about the legal threats, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “I think we have been very clear that this is a matter for the BBC, whose lawyers are now dealing with this.
“We’re not going to comment on an ongoing legal matter. The BBC is independent of the UK government. It is a matter for them and the US administration.”
It came after the US president on Saturday told reporters on board Air Force One that the prime minister was “very embarrassed” by the scandal and had already tried to “put a call in to me” about it.
It had been reported that Sir Keir Starmer was planning to call Mr Trump over the weekend where he would tell the president that the BBC must get its house in order, as well as defending the broadcaster as a British institution.
Mr Trump said he would sue the corporation for “anywhere between one billion dollars (£759.8m) and five billion dollars (£3.79bn), probably sometime next week”.
His comments followed an apology from the BBC on Thursday in which it said the edit of Mr Trump’s speech on 6 January 2021 had given the “mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”.
The broadcaster apologised and said the splicing of the speech was an “error of judgement” but refused to pay financial compensation after the US president’s lawyers threatened to sue for $1bn in damages unless a retraction and apology were published.
On Saturday, a BBC spokesperson said: “We have had no further contact from President Trump’s lawyers at this point. Our position remains the same.”
In an interview with GB News broadcast on Saturday, Mr Trump said he had an “obligation” to sue the BBC, adding: “This was so egregious. If you don’t do it, you don’t stop it from happening again with other people.”
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On Thursday, Mr Shah sent a personal letter to the White House to apologise for the editing, and lawyers for the corporation wrote to the president’s legal team, a BBC spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added: “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.”
The Panorama scandal saw the resignations of two of the BBC’s most senior executives: director general Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness.
The programme, broadcast a week before the 2024 US election results, spliced two clips together so that Mr Trump appeared to tell the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The BBC has said it will not air the Panorama episode Trump: A Second Chance? again, and published a retraction on the show’s webpage on Thursday.
