London [UK], November 14 (ANI): The BBC has apologised to US President Donald Trump for a Panorama episode that edited parts of his January 6, 2021, speech together but rejected his demands for compensation, the broadcaster said.
The corporation said the edit had given “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action” and confirmed it would not air the 2024 program again.
Trump has threatened to sue for one billion US dollars in damages unless the broadcaster issues a retraction of the October 2024 documentary, apologises, and compensates him. The controversy led to the resignations of BBC Director General Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness on Sunday. A second misleading edit from a 2022 Newsnight broadcast surfaced hours before the apology, adding to scrutiny.
According to CNN, a BBC spokesperson said lawyers for the broadcaster 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 January 6, 2021, which featured in the program,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that the BBC has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary on any of its platforms while rejecting the allegation that it was defamatory.
The BBC had previously apologised for an error of judgment in the documentary, titled Trump: A Second Chance?, which aired days before the 2024 presidential election that Trump won, CNN reported. The episode spliced together three quotes from two sections of a speech Trump delivered on January 6, 2021, even though the two portions were delivered nearly an hour apart.
Critics argued that the edit made the separate lines appear as one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell,” Al Jazeera reported. The documentary omitted a portion where Trump called for supporters to protest peacefully.
Following Trump’s speech, thousands of his supporters marched to the US Capitol and stormed the building in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Trump said the BBC had “butchered” his “beautiful” and “calming” speech and “made it sound radical.” Calling his remarks that day “good” and “perfect,” he said in a previous Truth Social post that the edit was “a terrible thing for democracy.”
He wrote, “The top people in the BBC, including Tim Davie, the boss, are all quitting/fired because they were caught ‘doctoring’ my very good (perfect!) speech of January 6th. Thank you to The Telegraph for exposing these corrupt ‘journalists.’ These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a presidential election. On top of everything else, they are from a foreign country, one that many consider our number one ally. What a terrible thing for democracy!”
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