The BBC has apologised to US President Donald Trump for editing a documentary in a way that made it appear that he had advocated violence.
However, the news corporation rejected the president’s demand for compensation.
The BBC issued the apology in its ‘Corrections and Clarifications’ section, published Thursday evening, noting that the programme had been reviewed after criticism of how Trump’s speech had been edited.
In the BBC Panorama documentary called ‘Trump: A Second Chance?’, the US president said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
But a leaked internal memo from the organisation noted that Trump’s words were an edit taken more than 50 minutes apart from his original speech in Washington DC in January 2021, where he said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
The memo was cited in a Telegraph report from Michael Prescott, a former independent external adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial standards committee.
The report forced Tim Davie, BBC director general, and Deborah Turness, chief executive officer (CEO) of BBC News, to resign from their roles.
In a letter sent to the BBC on Sunday, Trump’s lawyers said the outlet must retract the documentary which aired last year by November 14 or face a lawsuit for “no less” than $1 billion.
The US president’s lawyers added that the documentary edit caused him “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” and threatened legal action unless the corporation apologised and compensated him.
“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 6 January 2021, which featured in the programme,” a BBC spokesperson quoted lawyers for the corporation as responding to Trump’s legal team.
“The BBC has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary Trump: A Second Chance? on any BBC platforms.
“While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim.”
Meanwhile, the BBC’s board has been criticised for responding too slowly to the editing screw-up.
The heat was stoked as more concerns over its “anti-Israel bias” in the coverage of the Gaza war by its Arabic news service and its coverage of trans issues mounted.
Turness had acknowledged that mistakes were made but stressed that “allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong”.
