BBC apologises but doesn’t offer compensation to Trump over Panorama edit

The BBC is awaiting a response from Donald Trump, after the corporation apologised for the editing of a speech by the US president which appeared on Panorama in 2024.

The corporation said the splicing of the speech was an “error of judgment” but rejected his demands for compensation, after Trump’s lawyers threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn in damages unless a retraction and apology was published.

Earlier in the week Trump said in an interview with Fox News that the BBC had “defrauded the public” over the edit, which made it appear as if he was explicitly urging people to attack the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

Chairman Samir Shah has sent a personal letter to the White House to apologise for the editing, and lawyers for the corporation have written 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.”

Trump had threatened to sue in Florida although the programme did not air in the US.

If he tried to sue in the UK, the case would be too late as it is more than one year since the Panorama episode aired.

The broadcaster said it will not air the Panorama episode Trump: A Second Chance? again, and published a retraction on the show’s webpage on Thursday.

It said: “This programme was reviewed after criticism of how President Donald Trump’s 6th January 2021 speech was edited.

“During that sequence, we showed excerpts taken from different parts of the speech.

“However, 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.

“The BBC would like to apologise to President Trump for that error of judgment.”

The spokesperson added: “The BBC has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary Trump: A Second Chance? on any BBC platforms.”

On Friday, Lisa Nandy said she is confident the BBC is dealing with the threat of legal action from Trump with “the seriousness that it demands”.

The Culture Secretary told BBC Breakfast: “The BBC, as you know, is independent of Government and so they are having those direct discussions with the US administration and with their own lawyers, but I have been speaking daily to the chair of the board, the director-general and other senior leadership within the BBC.

“I am confident that they’re gripping this with the seriousness that it demands.”

Nandy added: “They’ve consulted lawyers and they believe that there is no grounds for defamation, not least because the programme was not aired in the United States, because there were other voices on the programme that spoke in support of the president, and because he went on to win that election during which the programme was aired.

“Nevertheless, the senior leadership at the highest levels believed that this was a really serious editorial failing. That is the basis on which they have apologised to the president, and apologised to Parliament and the public as well.”

On Thursday, reports said the BBC also faced accusations of misleading viewers about Trump’s US Capitol speech more than two years before the controversial Panorama edit aired.

In an episode broadcast in June 2022, Newsnight reportedly played an edit of his speech which was similar to the one used in the Panorama programme.

A BBC spokesperson said about the fresh claims, reported by The Telegraph’s Daily T podcast: “The BBC holds itself to the highest editorial standards. This matter has been brought to our attention and we are now looking into it.”

The Panorama scandal has seen two of the BBC’s most senior executives, director-general Tim Davie and news chief executive Deborah Turness, quit in response.

The programme, which was broadcast a week before the results of the US election in 2024, splices two clips together so that Trump is seen telling 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.”

On Monday, Shah issued an apology from the corporation over the “error of judgment” in the editing of the speech for the Panorama episode.

Responding to a letter from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Shah said there had been more than 500 complaints since the publication of the Michael Prescott memo, which raised concerns about the Panorama episode.

A report from Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, raised concerns that a speech made by Trump before the attack on the US Capitol had been selectively edited by the BBC.

Shah added: “We accept that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.”

On Thursday, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said his party has written to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, calling on him to demand that Trump “drop his ludicrous $1bn lawsuit against the BBC”.

In another post on X he said Trump “wants to destroy the BBC” and urged people to join his campaign, which is calling on the corporation to “fairly balance its political news coverage all year round, not just at election time”.

He also said that Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who accused the BBC of being “infected with left-wing bias”, “is egging him on”.

There have been reports that Reform UK has pulled out of a BBC documentary about the political party because of the controversy over the edited speech of Trump.

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