The BBC has issued an apology to US President Donald Trump after admitting that an episode of its Panorama programme misleadingly edited parts of his 6 January 2021 speech.
However, the broadcaster has refused to pay the $1 billion (£759 million) in damages demanded by Trump’s legal team.
In a statement published on its Corrections and Clarifications page on Thursday, the BBC said that the edit “gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action” and confirmed that the 2024 episode would not be rebroadcast.
The controversy has already prompted the resignations of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness, who stepped down on Sunday amid mounting criticism.
Trump’s lawyers have threatened legal action unless the BBC issues a full retraction, apology, and compensation for what they described as “defrauding viewers.”
Speaking to Fox News, Trump claimed the programme had “butchered” his words and “misled the public.”
A BBC spokesperson said the corporation had replied to a letter from Trump’s lawyers, while BBC Chair Samir Shah had sent a personal note to the White House apologising for the edit.
“While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited,” the statement read, “we strongly disagree that there is any basis for a defamation claim.”
In its legal response, the BBC outlined five reasons it believes Trump has no case:
- The programme aired only in the UK and was never distributed on US channels.
- There is no evidence of harm, as Trump was later re-elected.
- The edit was intended to condense a lengthy speech, not to mislead or defame.
- The 12-second clip was part of a broader, hour-long documentary that included supportive commentary on Trump.
- US defamation laws provide strong protection for political commentary and public-interest reporting.
An insider told the BBC that the corporation remains confident in its editorial defence.
The apology comes only hours after the Daily Telegraph reported a second case of a misleading Trump edit, this time from a Newsnight broadcast in 2022.
That segment showed Trump saying:
“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The programme then cut to scenes of the Capitol riots, with presenter Kirsty Wark saying, “and fight they did.”
However, Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, challenged the edit on-air at the time, noting that the “fight like hell” line came more than 50 minutes later in the original speech.
“Your video spliced together two separate parts of the speech,” Mulvaney said.
“It gives a misleading impression that he called for violence.”
In response to the Telegraph’s report, a BBC spokesperson said the corporation “holds itself to the highest editorial standards” and that the issue was being looked into internally.
A lawyer representing Trump told the paper it was “now clear that the BBC engaged in a pattern of defamation against President Trump.”
The controversy deepened following the leak of an internal memo written by a former independent adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, which reportedly criticised aspects of the corporation’s reporting, including on Trump’s coverage, trans issues, and BBC Arabic’s reporting of the Israel-Gaza conflict.
