The BBC has apologised to US president Donald Trump but rejected his demands for compensation over a “misleading” edit in one of its flagship current affair programs.
The edit was seen in a Panorama episode, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?”, where parts of Trump’s speech on 6 January 2021 were spliced together. Three quotes delivered almost an hour apart appeared to show Trump urging supporters to march with him to the US Capitol and “fight like hell”.
Among the parts of Trump’s speech that were cut, included him telling supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
This particular episode was broadcast days before the 2024 US presidential election.
Lawyers for Trump threatened to sue the BBC for $US1billion ($1.5 billion) over the episode unless the corporation issued a retraction, apologised and compensated him.
In response, the BBC said it wouldn’t show the program again and issued an apology to Trump but stopped short of compensating him.
“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 wrote in a retraction.
A BBC spokesperson said their own lawyers had written to Trump’s legal team in response to a letter received on Sunday.
“BBC chair Samir Shah has separately sent a personal letter to the White House making clear to President Trump that he and the corporation are sorry for the edit of the president’s speech on 6 January 2021, which featured in the programme.”
“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.”
In Sunday’s letter, Trump’s legal team set the BBC a deadline of 22:00 GMT on Friday for the corporation to respond.
Following this scandal, BBC director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness have both since resigned.
The BBC’s apology comes after the Daily Telegraph revealed a second similarly edited clip that was broadcast by Newsnight in 2022.