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THE BBC apologised on Thursday to U.S. President Donald Trump for a misleading edit of his January 6, 2021 speech, but said it had not defamed him, rejecting the grounds for his threatened US$1 billion lawsuit.
AP reported on Friday that Chair Samir Shah sent a personal letter to the White House expressing regret over the edit of the speech Trump delivered before some of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, just as Congress was set to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
“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,” the BBC said in a retraction.
The dispute arose from a “Panorama” documentary, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?”, broadcast days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
A third-party production company had spliced together quotes from different parts of Trump’s speech to make it appear that he urged supporters to “fight like hell,” omitting sections where he called for peaceful demonstration.
Trump’s lawyer had demanded an apology and threatened to sue for “overwhelming financial and reputational harm,” setting a Friday deadline for the BBC to respond. While the BBC apologised, it stated there are no plans to rebroadcast the programme and refused to offer compensation.
The controversy contributed to the resignations of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness, who said the scandal had damaged the corporation.
Legal experts have suggested that pursuing the case in the U.K. or the U.S. would be difficult for Trump, noting that deadlines for defamation claims in English courts have long expired and that the documentary was not broadcast in the United States. - November 14, 2025