Jack Queen and David Thomas
US President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the BBC for defamation over edited clips of a speech that made it appear he directed supporters to storm the US Capitol, opening an international front in his fight against media coverage he deems untrue or unfair.
Trump has accused Britain’s publicly owned broadcaster of defaming him by splicing parts of a speech on January 6, 2021, including one section where he told supporters to march on the Capitol and another where he said “fight like hell”.
It omitted a section in which he called for peaceful protest.
Trump’s lawsuit, filed on Tuesday AEDT in a Miami federal court, alleges the BBC defamed him and violated a Florida law that bars deceptive and unfair trade practices. He is seeking $US5 billion ($7.5 billion) in damages for each of the lawsuit’s two counts, for a total of $US10 billion ($15 billion).
The BBC has apologised to Trump, admitted an error of judgment and acknowledged that the edit gave the mistaken impression that he had made a direct call for violent action. But it has said there is no legal basis to sue.
The lawsuit states that the BBC, despite its apology, “has made no showing of actual remorse for its wrongdoing nor meaningful institutional changes to prevent future journalistic abuses”.
The BBC is funded through a mandatory licence fee on all TV viewers, which UK lawyers say could make any payout to Trump politically fraught.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said in a statement that the BBC “has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda”.
A BBC spokesperson told Reuters that it had “no further contact from President Trump’s lawyers at this point. Our position remains the same.” The broadcaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the lawsuit was filed.
Crisis led to resignations
Facing one of the biggest crises in its 103-year history, the BBC has said it has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary titled Trump: A Second Chance? on any of its platforms.
The dispute over the clip, featured on the BBC’s Panorama program shortly before the 2024 presidential election, sparked a public relations crisis for the broadcaster, which led to the resignations of its two most senior officials.
BBC chairman Samir Shah called it an “error of judgment”, and wrote a personal letter of apology to Trump.
Trump’s lawyers say the BBC caused him overwhelming reputational and financial harm.
The documentary drew scrutiny after the leak of a BBC memo by an external standards adviser that raised concerns about its editing, part of a wider investigation into political bias at the publicly funded broadcaster.
While the documentary was not broadcast in the United States, Trump’s lawyers allege they can sue in a US federal court because the program could possibly have been seen by American subscribers of BritBox, which is owned by the BBC.
According to The Washington Post, the lawsuit also says US residents could have accessed the BBC’s UK-only streaming service, iPlayer, through a virtual private network, or VPN.
Trump may have sued in the US because defamation claims in Britain must be brought within a year of publication, a window that has closed for the Panorama episode.
To overcome the US Constitution’s legal protections for free speech and the press, Trump will need to prove not only that the edit was false and defamatory but also that the BBC knowingly misled viewers or acted recklessly.
The broadcaster could argue that the documentary was substantially true, and its editing decisions did not create a false impression, legal experts said. It could also claim the program did not damage Trump’s reputation.
Other media have settled with Trump, including CBS and ABC, when Trump sued them following his comeback win in the November 2024 election.
Trump has filed lawsuits against The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and a newspaper in Iowa, all of which have denied wrongdoing.
The attack on the US Capitol in January 2021 was aimed at blocking Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential win over Trump in the 2020 US election.
Reuters
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
