British Media Frets Over Trump’s Threat to Sue BBC: ‘If the BBC Just Backs Down, It Doesn’t Deserve to Survive’
BBC Headquarters (Press Association via AP Images)
President Donald Trump’s threat to sue the BBC has sent seismic waves of panic through the British media, with numerous commentators fretting that if the public broadcaster caves to the president’s demands, it would effectively end its credibility, if not its existence altogether.
The issue stems from a 2024 Panorama documentary that used an edited clip of Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, 2021 that immediately preceded the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol, as his supporters stormed the building to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College votes for President Joe Biden.
The edited clip had Trump saying: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you and we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
However, that was a combination of different sections of his speech. That specific phrase as Trump said it that day, near the beginning of his remarks, was: “We’re gonna walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re gonna walk down, we’re gonna walk down any one you want but I think right here, we’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and we’re gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen.”
The part where Trump said, “And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” was closer to the end of his speech. A video and transcript of Trump’s full speech can be reviewed here, as posted by NPR.
After The Telegraph ran a story about the edited clip, BBC Director General Tim Davie and News chief Deborah Turness resigned, and Trump lambasted the broadcaster on his Truth Social account, accusing them of being “corrupt” and airing “doctored” footage.
The president followed up with a letter from his attorneys threatening to sue for a whopping $1 billion; BBC chairman Samir Shah had apologized for the “error in judgement,” adding “[w]e are now considering how to reply to him.”
Trump’s litigation threat led the BBC Board to hold an “unexpected meeting” Wednesday morning, reported CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter, citing “a source with direct knowledge of the meeting.”
Stelter noted the horrified and worried reactions from the British media world to the threat in Wednesday’s Reliable Sources newsletter:
Media outlets in the UK have been consumed with stories about whether the BBC will try to appease Trump, or will stand up to him, and what the consequences will be. “If the BBC decides to fold, rather than fight,” Matt Frei said on Channel 4 last night, “its reputation is shot to pieces, isn’t it? Around the world?” Yes, Andrew Marr said, “it will be terrible.”
Frankly, Lewis Goodall said on “The News Agents” podcast, “if the BBC just backs down,” then “it doesn’t deserve to survive.”
For now, the corporation is sticking with its original statement about Trump’s legal threat: “We are reviewing the letter and will respond directly in due course.”
Trump has been able to strong-arm several American media outlets into multimillion-dollar settlements, despite numerous legal experts saying the companies had strong First Amendment defenses, including Paramount over a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris and ABC News over comments made by George Stephanopoulos while interviewing Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC).
Still, as Stelter pointed out, Trump would face an additional hurdle if he sued a foreign outlet like the BBC, citing a report by Reuters’ Jack Queen that outlined how Trump would first have to establish jurisdiction.
“A threshold question would be whether the BBC has actively sought to establish a presence in Florida and whether people in the state watched the documentary and felt deceived by it, legal experts said,” wrote Queen, noting that the documentary was not aired in the U.S. but was posted online until recently.
Trump cannot sue the BBC in the UK because the one-year statute of limitations has already passed. Even if that were not the case, UK law has a limit on damages in libel cases that’s less than $500,000. The American courts theoretically offer a chance at a much larger score, although damages in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars are extremely rare.
The president has also demanded $10 billion in a lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over a July article about a letter Trump wrote for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book, compiled by his accomplice and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump’s complaint insisted the letter did not exist and was faked, but in September, the Journal published a photo of the letter.
