The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) tendered an apology to US President Donald Trump, after he threatened to file a defamation suit against the news corporation for publishing a misleading Panorama documentary portraying him as inciting violence. However, the British news corporation refused to pay any compensation for their admitted misconduct, claiming that there was no basis for the defamation suit. “The BBC would like to apologise for that error of judgement,” wrote BBC Chair, Samir Shah, in a letter, maintaining that the corporation’s journalism remains rooted in fairness and impartiality.
On Thursday (13th November), the corporation stated in its Corrections and Clarifications section that the Panorama programme has been reviewed following criticism over Trump’s distorted speech in it. “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 reportedly said in a retraction statement.
The video showed Trump urging his followers to “fight like hell”
The corporation’s apology came after Trump threatened to file a million-dollar defamation suit against the it, unless it issued a retraction of the controversial October 2024 documentary, offered an apology and paid compensation. Trump’s lawyers had given November 14 as a deadline to the BBC to retract the documentary, in which parts of Trump’s January 2021 speech were joined together to make it look like he urged his supporters to fight like hell and march with him to the Capitol. “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell,” Trump was heard saying in the video clip in the Panorama Programme.
The BBC, on Monday (10th November), confirmed that it received Trump’s legal notice and said that it would review the letter and respond directly. The corporation said that apart from its lawyers’ response to the legal notice, Shah wrote a personal letter to the White House stating that he and the corporation were sorry for the edit. It added that while it regretted the manner in which the video clip was edited, there was no basis for the defamation claim.
The documentary stirred a massive controversy, leading to the resignation of the BBC’s two top executives, Director General Tim Davie and News Chief Executive Deborah Turness, on Sunday (9th November). The corporation admitted that the documentary did give “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action” and assured that it would not broadcast the show again.
