The BBC was accused of misleadingly editing Donald Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, two years before the Panorama sequence that led to the director general’s resignation.
The clip aired on Newsnight in 2022 and a guest on the live show questioned the way it had been edited, the Daily Telegraph reported.
On Monday, the BBC apologized for an “error of judgement” over an edited part of the same speech that aired last year on Panorama.
The consequences were the resignations of the BBC director general, Tim Davie, and the head of news, Deborah Turness, and a legal threat from the US president, Donald Trump.
Trump’s lawyers have written to the BBC saying he will sue for $1bn (£759m) in damages unless the corporation retracts, apologizes and compensates him for the Panorama broadcast.
BBC News has contacted the BBC for comment.
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.”
On the show Panorama, 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.”
On the Newsnight program the editing is a little different.
He 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.”
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.
The Telegraph also reported that a complainant told the newspaper that a new discussion was also closed the following day.
Last week, a leaked internal BBC memo claimed that Panorama had misled viewers by splicing together two parts of Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech, making it appear that he was explicitly urging people to attack the US Capitol after his election loss.
The documentary aired days before the November 2024 US presidential election.
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.
