BBC apologizes to Trump for editing Panorama but refuses to pay compensation

The BBC has apologized to US President Donald Trump for an episode of Panorama in which parts of a speech were stitched together, but rejected his demands for compensation.

The corporation said the editing had given “the erroneous impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action” and said it would not show the program again.

Trump’s lawyers have threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion (£759m) in damages unless the corporation retracts, apologizes and compensates him.

The fallout from the scandal led to the resignations of BBC director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness.

The BBC has approached the White House for comment.

The apology comes after the Daily Telegraph revealed a second similarly edited clip, broadcast on Newsnight in 2022.

In its Corrections and Clarifications section, published on Thursday night, the BBC said the Panorama program had been reviewed following criticism of how Trump’s speech had been edited.

“We accept that our editing 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,” he said.

A BBC spokesperson said BBC lawyers had written to President Trump’s legal team in response to a letter received on Sunday.

“BBC Chairman Samir Shah separately sent a personal letter to the White House making it clear to President Trump that he and the corporation regret the editing of the President’s January 6, 2021 speech, which appeared on the programme,” they said.

“The BBC has no plans to broadcast the documentary Trump: A Second Chance? on any of the BBC’s platforms.

“While the BBC sincerely regrets the way the video clip was edited, we do not agree that there is a basis for a defamation claim.”

In Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, he said, “We are going to walk to the Capitol and cheer on our brave senators, congressmen, and congresswomen.”

More than 50 minutes into the speech, he said: “And we fought. We fought like hell.”

In the 2024 Panorama show, the clip shows him saying, “We’re going to walk to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

Speaking to Fox News, Trump said his Jan. 6, 2021, speech had been “butchered” and that the way he was presented had “let down” viewers.

The BBC received the letter from Trump’s lawyers on Sunday. It demands a “full and fair retraction” of the documentary, an apology and for the BBC to “appropriately compensate President Trump for the damage caused.”

It had set a deadline of 22:00 GMT (17:00 EST) on Friday for the corporation to respond.

In its legal letter to Trump’s legal team, the BBC makes five main arguments.

First, he says the BBC did not have the rights and did not distribute the Panorama episode on its American channels.

When the documentary was made available on BBC iPlayer, it was geographically restricted to UK viewers.

Second, he says the documentary did no harm to Trump when he was re-elected.

Third, he says the clip was not designed to mislead, but simply to shorten a long speech, and that the editing was not done maliciously.

Fourth, he says the clip should never have been considered in isolation. Rather, it was 12 seconds in an hour-long program, in which many Trump supporters also participated.

Finally, an opinion on a matter of public interest and political speech is strongly protected by defamation laws in the United States.

A BBC insider said that internally there is strong confidence in the case presented by the corporation and in its defence.

Earlier on Thursday, the BBC was accused of another misleading edit of Trump’s speech from January 6, 2021, two years before the Panorama footage aired.

In a 2022 Newsnight programme, the editing is a little different to Panorama.

Trump is shown saying, “We’re going to walk to the Capitol. And we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you won’t have a country anymore.”

This was followed by a voiceover from presenter Kirsty Wark saying “and they fought” over footage of the Capitol riot.

Responding to the video from the same show, former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who resigned from a diplomatic post and became a Trump critic after describing the Jan. 6 riot as a “coup attempt,” said the video had “tied together” Trump’s speech.

“That line about ‘we fight and fight like hell’ actually comes later in the speech, and yet your video makes it seem like those two things came together,” he said.

Responding to Thursday’s story in the Telegraph, a BBC spokesman said the BBC is held to the “highest editorial standards” and that the matter was being investigated.

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told The Telegraph that “it was now clear that the BBC was engaged in a pattern of defamation against President Trump.”