BBC apologises to Trump over Panorama edit but refuses to pay compensation

The BBC has apologized to US President Donald Trump for a Panorama episode that spliced ​​together parts of his January 6, 2021 speech, but rejected his demands for compensation.

The corporation said the editing created “the erroneous impression that President Trump made a direct call for violent action” and said it would no longer air the 2024 program.

Trump's lawyers have threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion (£759 million) in damages unless the corporation retracts its words, apologizes and pays him compensation.

The fallout from the scandal led to the resignations of BBC director general Tim Davey and news chief Deborah Turness on Sunday.

BBC News has contacted the White House for comment.

Apology comes a few hours later second similarly edited clipbroadcast on Newsnight in 2022, was revealed Daily Telegraph.

In the “Corrections and clarifications” section.In a statement released on Thursday evening, the BBC said the Panorama program had been revised following criticism of the way Trump's speech was edited.

“We acknowledge that our edits inadvertently created the impression that we were showing a single, continuous section of speech rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this created the erroneous impression that President Trump made a direct call for violent action,” the post said.

BBC lawyers have reached out to President Trump's legal team in response to the letter received on Sunday, a BBC spokesman said.

“BBC Chairman Samir Shah separately sent a personal letter to the White House making clear to President Trump that he and the corporation regretted the editing of the President's speech of January 6, 2021, which appeared on the program,” they said.

They added: “While the BBC sincerely regrets the way the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree that there is a cause of action for libel.”

In his speech, Trump said, “We are going to go down to the Capitol and cheer on our brave senators, congressmen and women.”

More than 50 minutes into his speech, he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell.”

In the Panorama program, a clip shows him saying: “We're going to go 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 was “distorted” and the way it was presented “deceived” viewers.

The BBC received a letter from Trump's lawyers on Sunday. He is demanding a “full and fair retraction” of the documentary, an apology and for the BBC to “adequately compensate President Trump for the harm it has caused.”

It set a deadline for the corporation to respond at 22:00 GMT (17:00 IST) on Friday.

In its letter to Trump's lawyers, the BBC outlines five main arguments for why it does not believe it has a case to respond.

Firstly, it states that the BBC did not have the rights to distribute the Panorama episode on its US channels and did not distribute it.

When the documentary was made available on BBC iPlayer, it was only available to viewers in the UK.

Second, it says the documentary did not harm Trump because he was re-elected soon after.

Thirdly, it says that the clip was not created to mislead, but simply to shorten a long speech, and that the editing was not done with malicious intent.

Fourth, it states that this clip was never intended to be viewed in isolation. Or rather, it was 12 seconds in a one-hour program, which also contained many voices in support of Trump.

Finally, opinion on a matter of public interest and political speech are strongly protected by defamation laws in the United States.

A BBC insider said there was a strong belief within the company in the corporation's case and its defence.

Earlier on Thursday, the BBC was accused of another misleading edit of Trump's speech on January 6, 2021, two years before the Panorama episode aired.

The editing of the 2022 Newsnight program is slightly different to that of Panorama.

Trump is shown saying: “We're going down to the Capitol. And we will cheer on our brave senators, congressmen and women. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you won't have a country anymore.”

This was followed by a voice-over from presenter Kirsty Wark, who said: “And they fought” in footage of the Capitol riot.

Responding to a clip from the same program, former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who left his diplomatic post and became a Trump critic after calling the Jan. 6 riot an “attempted coup,” said the video “glued together” Trump's speech.

“That line about ‘we fight and we fight like hell’ is actually later in the speech, but your video makes it seem like those two things came together,” he said.

In response to the Telegraph article on Thursday, a BBC spokesman said the BBC was committed to the “highest editorial standards” and the matter was being looked into.

A spokesman for Trump's legal team told the Telegraph that “it is now clear that the BBC is engaged in defaming President Trump.”

Concerns about the Trump Panorama documentary arose when leaked internal memowritten by a former independent external consultant to the standards corporation's editorial committee, was published in the Telegraph newspaper. Among other things, the document also criticizes the BBC's reporting on transgender issues and the BBC Arabic service's coverage of the war between Israel and Gaza.