Starmer to discuss BBC 'error' in call with Trump

Supporters of the BBC have urged United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer to defend the state-owned broadcaster in a phone call with United States President Donald Trump.

The US leader said on Friday he plans to sue the corporation for between $1 billion and $5 billion over its edit of a speech he made in 2021 that made it sound like he incited the Capitol Hill riot.

The misleading edit led to the resignations of the BBC's director general, Tim Davie, and its head of news, Deborah Turness, and elicited an apology from its chairman, Samir Shah. But the contrition only seemed to spur Trump on in his quest for court-awarded damages and Trump told GB News on Saturday: "If you don't do it, you don't stop it from happening again with other people."

Former BBC director general Tony Hall said the corporation must now resist the urge to try to settle the matter with an out-of-court payment, saying on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg program: "(It)should not happen. You're talking about public money. It would not be appropriate."

Hall said there clearly was a "serious error" in the edit and that the error should have been noticed before the Panorama program was broadcast, but that the BBC is overwhelmingly unbiased and that the incident should not overshadow the "hard work, diligence, and the belief in impartiality" BBC journalists have.

The BBC said last week it accepts its "edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech" but said it does not think the mistake amounts to defamation.

The Telegraph newspaper said Starmer plans to tell Trump the BBC will "get its house in order" and that the corporation will be required to uphold the highest possible journalistic standards and correct mistakes quickly. It said he will also explain that the broadcaster is a strong British institution with a crucial role to play in combating disinformation.

The Express newspaper quoted Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey as saying: "This is Keir Starmer's moment to stand up for Britain and call on Trump to drop his ludicrous lawsuit. The prime minister has spent months cozying up to Trump. If he can't stop him from attacking one of our most precious institutions, what was it all for?"

Former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak wrote in The Sunday Times that the BBC has been "falling short" of representing all viewpoints in the UK for some time, and that it should appoint an internal watchdog "responsible for spotting problems and addressing them before they have turned into a scandal".

"It cannot continue to sit back and wait for others to highlight its mistakes," he wrote.