The BBC has apologised to US President Donald Trump for editing a documentary in a way that made it appear that he had advocated violence.
However, the news corporation rejected the president’s
demand for compensation.
The BBC issued the apology in its ‘Corrections and
Clarifications’ section, published Thursday evening, noting that the programme
had been reviewed after criticism of how Trump’s speech had been edited.
In the BBC Panorama documentary called ‘Trump: A Second
Chance?’, the US president said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and
I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
But a leaked internal memo from the organisation noted that
Trump’s words were an edit taken more than 50 minutes apart from his original
speech in Washington DC in January 2021, where he said, “We’re going to walk
down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and
congressmen and women.”
The memo was cited in a Telegraph report from Michael
Prescott, a former independent external adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial
standards committee.
The report forced Tim Davie, BBC director general, and
Deborah Turness, chief executive officer (CEO) of BBC News, to resign from
their roles.
In a letter sent to the BBC on Sunday, Trump’s lawyers said
the outlet must retract the documentary which aired last year by November 14 or
face a lawsuit for “no less” than $1 billion.
The US president’s lawyers added that the documentary edit
caused him “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” and threatened legal
action unless the corporation apologised and compensated him.
“BBC chair Samir Shah has separately sent a personal letter
to the White House making clear to President Trump that he and the corporation
are sorry for the edit of the president’s speech on 6 January 2021, which
featured in the programme,” a BBC spokesperson quoted lawyers for the
corporation as responding to Trump’s legal team.
“The BBC has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary Trump:
A Second Chance? on any BBC platforms.
“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.”
Meanwhile, the BBC’s board has been criticised for
responding too slowly to the editing screw-up.
The heat was stoked as more concerns over its “anti-Israel
bias” in the coverage of the Gaza war by its Arabic news service and its
coverage of trans issues mounted.
Turness had acknowledged that mistakes were made but
stressed that “allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong”.
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