The BBC has finally issued an apology to Donald Trump today after the US President said he has an ‘obligation’ to sue the broadcaster over the editing of his speech.
Trump had demanded a full retraction, immediate apology, and an offer of compensation from the BBC after a Panorama documentary made it appear as though he encouraged violence before the January 6 Capitol riot.
The broadcaster had been given until tomorrow to respond to the President’s $1billion legal threat after criticism that viewers had been misled by the programme.
In a statement on Friday, the BBC said the edit was an ‘error of judgment’ and the programme will ‘not be broadcast again in this form on any BBC platforms’
But it added that ‘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’.
The episode, Trump: A Second Chance? has since been taken down from the BBC website, and a retraction was published on the webpage on Thursday evening.
It said: ‘This programme was reviewed after criticism of how President Donald Trump’s 6th January 2021 speech was edited.
‘During that sequence, we showed excerpts taken from different parts of the speech.
‘However, we accept that our 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, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.’
Addressing his legal action earlier this week, Mr Trump said: ‘I guess I have to [sue]. Why not? They defrauded the public, and they’ve admitted it. This is within one of our great allies, supposedly our great ally.
‘That’s a pretty sad event. They actually changed my January 6 speech, which was a beautiful speech, which was a very calming speech, and they made it sound radical.’
Referencing how director-general Tim Davie had quit on Sunday over the furore, the President added: ‘They showed me the results of how they butchered it up. It was very dishonest and the head man quit and a lot of the other people quit.’
He also told Fox News on Tuesday: ‘I think I have an obligation to [sue] because you can’t allow people to do that.’
Mr Trump said he would be ‘left with no alternative but to enforce his legal and equitable rights… including by filing legal action for no less than 1,000,000,000 dollars [£760million] in damages,’ if the BBC failed to act.
When asked about Mr Trump’s legal threats, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters yesterday the corporation is a ‘Leftist propaganda machine’.
She also said that it is ‘unfortunate’ the broadcaster is funded by British taxpayers, before adding that the legal action is expected to continue.
BBC chairman Samir Shah has apologised for an ‘error of judgment’ over the edit, which was first broadcast in October last year, on Monday, after it led to Mr Davie and Deborah Turness, chief executive of news, resigning.
