Trump sues BBC for up to £7.5bn over Panorama speech edit
The US president has filed a lawsuit against the BBC and is seeking up to 10 billion dollars (£7.5 billion) in damages in response to the editing of a speech he made before the 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Donald Trump’s lawyers argue the depiction of him given in the edit, which aired in a Panorama documentary a week before the results of the 2024 US election, “was false and defamatory” and they also said “the BBC intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers around the world”.
In the Panorama programme, a clip from Mr Trump’s speech on January 6 2021 was spliced to show him saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The lawsuit is seeking five billion dollars (£3.7 billion) in damages on two counts: for an allegation of defamation, and for a violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
A BBC spokesperson said on Monday night: “We have had no further contact from President Trump’s lawyers at this point. Our position remains the same.”
The Panorama programme was not broadcast in the US, but the lawsuit says it can be watched on the BritBox subscription streaming platform and also claims “millions of Florida citizens use a virtual private network (VPN) to view content such as the Panorama documentary”.
The lawsuit also alleges a Canadian third-party media group, Blue Ant Media Corporation, had licensing rights to the documentary outside the UK and distributed the programme “in North America, including Florida”, though the BBC has not yet responded to these claims.
The complaint from Mr Trump’s legal team alleges there is “substantial evidence” that demonstrates the BBC and its leadership “bore President Trump ill will, wanted him to lose the 2024 presidential election, and were dishonest in their coverage of him”, before the publication of the Panorama documentary.
The document also repeats statements by UK politicians including Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and former prime minister Liz Truss, the latter of whom discussed “the BBC’s pattern of actual malice”.
The scandal unfolded earlier this year after a leaked memo, written by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, highlighted concerns about the Panorama episode.
Shortly after the leak, Mr Trump threatened a billion-dollar legal action and litigator Alejandro Brito demanded that “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” made about the president must be retracted immediately.
The president said the lawsuit was imminent when he spoke at a press conference on Monday afternoon in Washington.
He said: “In a little while, you’ll be seeing I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth literally. They had me saying things that I never said.
“We’ll be filing that suit probably this afternoon or tomorrow morning.”
After the report was leaked, BBC chairman Samir Shah apologised on behalf of the BBC over an “error of judgment” and accepted the editing of the 2024 documentary gave “the impression of a direct call for violent action”.
The fallout from the report also led to the resignation of both director-general Tim Davie and head of BBC News Deborah Turness.
BBC News reported lawyers for the BBC had given a lengthy response to the president’s claims before Mr Trump filed the lawsuit and said “there was no malice in the edit and that Trump was not harmed by the programme, as he was re-elected shortly after it aired”.
The complaint was filed at the US district court for the southern district of Florida, and names BBC, BBC Studios Distribution and BBC Studios Production as defendants.
The main streaming platform that carries Panorama, BBC iPlayer, and the TV channel that carries it, BBC One, are not available in the US.
Mr Trump has a history of suing news organisations in the US and is engaged in legal action with the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
The Blue Ant Media Corporation, the BBC, BBC Studios Distribution and BBC Studios Production have all been approached for comment.
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Lets hope this goes nowhere. The BBC World Service would no doubt be the in the firing line again, a respected global news and analysis radio station admired and feared by autocrats everywhere.
I also hope it goes nowhere as I don’t like The Orange Man.
However as for the BBC in general all Western MSM is an unreliable source of information. I haven’t watched the BBC for many years.
BBC television news is I agree, less than wonderful. Channel 4 News does a better job. However, BBC World Service RADIO is a great first-hand source from embedded reporting from areas of the world not considered tabloid front page.
You’ve missed all the free publicity the Beeb has given Farage then?
So he is effectively suing the British public. We all pay our tv licence. What a nasty bully.
Brexit Broadcasting Corporation…cry me a river…
I won’t mind if I didn’t have to pay the darn licence fee.
You don’t have to, lifelong no telly…
Last time I saw Dr Who it was in black and white…
This is trump 101. Tie people up in courts even if his claim is dead on arrival.
But yeah, even after his hideous comments yesterday added to his litany of nasty people still back him.
He cites truss as a serious sort.
it was a bad edit but he led the charge.
stop bowing to this woman abuser and convicted felon.
How stupid can you be to try and manipulate anything from Trump, you simply need to report what he says to prove how vile he is on so many fronts.
But the BBC have failed to control individuals who we know in this country have turned it into the English Broadcasting Corporation, from politics to sport.
Trump doesn’t like public funded broadcasting full stop. A stupid error has put this at risk in the UK.
“millions of Florida citizens use a virtual private network (VPN) to view content such as the Panorama documentary”
Presumably in violation of terms and conditions so the citizens of Florida have just been accused of doing something really really bad. So bad.
Does the Trump administration have access to VPN networks? Worrying.
There’s gratitude, you’d think he’d be grateful to the BBC for making him sound coherent by stringing together a couple of his random ramblings.