Anyone who thought the BBC’s apology to Donald Trump was going to stop his threat of a lawsuit was, frankly, deluded.
BBC chairman Samir Shah perhaps summed it up in the interview he gave me the day after the director general and CEO of News resigned. He called the president “a litigious guy.”
That’s an understatement, evident in the number of legal cases Trump has brought against various American media companies.
The president, according to his interview with GB News, is clearly hurt by what he considers “atrocious” editing, and has now apparently increased the amount he will sue the corporation for.
While aboard Air Force One on Friday, Trump told reporters the figure would be “between a billion dollars [£759m] and 5 billion dollars.”
To put this in context, the BBC’s annual income from license fees was £3.8bn last year.
On Friday, Trump said, “They changed the words that came out of my mouth.” He wants to know why Panorama edited two clips of his speech together to give them a “totally different meaning.”
He does not accept the BBC’s response that what happened was unintentional.
This is a very serious moment in the history of the BBC. It stands or falls if it is seen as impartial: a source to rely on in a world where trust in institutions is falling.
Instead, the corporation is accused of the opposite: it is facing a costly and very public battle with the most powerful man in the world.
So where does it go from here?
Since the president first threatened legal action, it was clear that the corporation had no intention of offering him compensation. He believes that whatever mistake was made, the Panorama program did not cause any harm to Trump.
He was elected president shortly after it aired, and anyway, the BBC says, the show wasn’t broadcast on any American channels, so how could it have hurt him?
I think there was some consensus, inside and outside the corporation, that the notion of using license payers’ money to make a deal with Trump was a failure.
As one former senior BBC executive told me, after the BBC refused to offer compensation, “they have made the right decision.” But this person also said that if the president decided to sue, the BBC would have to “go all out and get the best lawyers in Florida.”
The reason for reaching an agreement would have been to reduce long-term costs.
It now appears that the BBC will be embroiled in a protracted and costly court battle at a time when it should be 100% focused on discussions over the renewal of its charter, which are intensifying.
People at the top of the BBC should be fully focused on what, in normal times, is a pivotal moment for the corporation: when what it is for, its scope, how it will be funded and the details of its very existence are all negotiated between the government and the BBC in time for a new charter in early 2028.
It is already losing the man who should have led it: Tim Davie, the CEO.
Now the BBC’s top brains will be diverted to prepare their next moves in what could be a very damaging, even existential, fight with Donald Trump. The legal fees alone could be very expensive.
All of this could have been avoided if the BBC had been open about the error much sooner and corrected it. Rather, it has a long way to go.
But there may be routes out of it.
Could the BBC ask the UK government to intervene through back channels? Would a call from Prime Minister Keir Starmer persuade Trump to change his mind? Would Starmer even want to get involved and spend his own political capital on the president of the United States?
One positive for the BBC this week was the firmness with which Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy defended the company.
He spoke of the widespread trust in BBC News and described the corporation as “a light on the hill for people in dark times” bringing the country together, whether through Celebrity Traitors or its VE Day coverage.
Donald Trump, for his part, has called the BBC “worse than fake news.” He claims that the corporation and its journalists are corrupt.
The fight has truly begun.
