BBC sends apology over speech edit but denies defamation

LONDON — The British Broadcasting Corporation sent a personal apology to US President Donald Trump on Thursday but said there was no legal basis for him to sue the public broadcaster over a documentary his lawyers called defamatory.

The broadcaster also confirmed that the program will not be shown again.

The documentary, which aired on the BBC's Panorama news program just before the US presidential election in 2024, spliced together three parts of Trump's speech on Jan 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the Capitol. The edit created the impression he had called for violence.

A BBC spokesperson said: "While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree that there is a basis for a defamation claim."

Lawyers for the US president threatened on Sunday to sue the BBC for damages of up to $1 billion unless it withdrew the documentary, apologized to the president and compensated him for "financial and reputational harm".

By asserting that Trump's defamation case lacks merit, the BBC effectively signaled that it believes his claim for financial damages is equally untenable. But the broadcaster did not directly address Trump's financial demand.

In its statement, the BBC said Chair Samir Shah on Thursday "sent a personal letter to the White House making clear that he and the corporation were sorry for the edit". Shah earlier in the week apologized to a British parliamentary oversight committee and said the edit was "an error of judgment". In the Thursday statement, the BBC added that it has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary on any of its platforms.

The BBC has been thrown into its biggest crisis in decades after two senior executives resigned amid allegations of bias, including the editing of Trump's speech. The claims came to light because of a leaked report by a BBC standards official.

Founded in 1922 and funded largely by a license fee paid by TV-watching Britons, the BBC is without a permanent leader as the government weighs how it should be funded in the future.

It is a vital instrument of Britain's "soft power" globally, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he believed in a "strong and independent" BBC on Wednesday.

British Culture Minister Lisa Nandy said on Friday that it was right that the BBC had apologized to Trump over a documentary his lawyers called defamatory.

"They've rightly accepted that they didn't meet the highest standards," Nandy told Times Radio. "I think it's also right that they've apologized."

Xinhua