The resignation of the director general of the BBC, Tim Davie, and the head of the News division, Deborah Turness, was not enough for the president of the United States over the controversial editing in a documentary of a speech by Donald Trump in the hours before the riots at the Capitol in Washington in January 2021. Trump’s legal team has sent a letter to the British public body in which it threatens to file a lawsuit “not less” than 1 billion dollars (870 million euros) if the BBC does not accept a “full and fair”.
The recording, broadcast eight days before the November 2024 presidential election, contained a partial clip that appeared to suggest Trump had actively encouraged the altercations.
The American president reacted with euphoria to the announcement on Sunday of the departure of Davie and Turness. “People at the highest levels at the BBC resigned/were fired because they were caught ‘manipulating’ my excellent (PERFECT!) speech on 6 January,” he said on his social network, Truth Social. Now Trump gives the BBC until next Friday at 10pm. in the UK (another in mainland Spain) to rectify it.
According to the letter, which was first accessed by the US press, “if the BBC does not comply, President Trump will have no choice but to exercise his legal and equitable rights,” which include the multimillion-dollar damages lawsuit. “The BBC is warned,” reads the letter, which adds, in capital letters: “PLEASE TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION.”
The retraction request concerns the two-chapter documentary entitled Trump, second chance? (Trump, second chance?), produced by the October Films company for the Panorama programme, one of the BBC’s reference programmes. Trump’s legal team is also demanding an apology for what it considers “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading and inflammatory statements” about the US president, as well as appropriate compensation for any damages caused. The BBC promised to respond but, despite mounting pressure internally and from the White House, said there was no intention to “mislead” (misleadin the term used by the company).
The issue was caused by a cut in the documentary in which Trump appeared to call for the riots, which resulted in five deaths and more than 300 arrests. The edited video showed the president saying: “We will go to the Capitol and I will be with you and we will fight. We fight like a dice and if you don’t fight like a dice, you will lose your country.” In the actual speech, however, the American president said he would accompany his supporters to the Capitol to “encourage the brave congressmen” and “peacefully and patriotically” make their voices heard. The reference to “fighting like hell” (““fight like hell”) was pronounced 50 minutes later, at the end of his speech.
The BBC admitted that the change in cut “gave the impression that Trump had made a direct call for violent action” and expressed its “apologies for that error of judgement”. However, he clarified that the intention was to summarize the keys to the message in a “condensed format”, to illustrate what happened on January 6, 2021.
According to the US press, Trump’s lawyers have threatened to file a lawsuit in the State of Florida, so they will have to demonstrate that the specific episode of Trump, second chance? it was accessible to state viewers and demonstrated that the president had suffered considerable harm from that broadcast.
Under Florida law, each legal action lasts two years, double that allowed under British law. Since the documentary was broadcast more than a year ago, the president has been unable to sue the BBC in London, the deadline having expired.
