The BBC had been accused of misleading viewers on Donald Trump’s US Capitol speech more than two years before a controversial Panorama edit aired that led to the resignation of the broadcaster’s director general and the CEO of BBC News.
In June 2022, BBC Newsnight reportedly aired an edited clip of the US president’s speech that, like a later Panorama episode in October 2024, appeared to show him explicitly urging people to attack the Capitol on January 6, 2021, The Telegraph reported.
It follows intense scrutiny of the Panorama documentary, with Trump threatening to sue the BBC for $1billion and demanding an apology and a payout that would “appropriately compensate” him.
In the Panorama clip, broadcast before the election, Mr Trump appears to tell supporters: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight, we fight like hell.”
However, those lines were taken from different sections of his speech, nearly an hour apart.
In the original footage, his language was more restrained: “We’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” adding that his supporters would march “peacefully and patriotically” to make their voices heard.
The BBC has apologised to Mr Trump over the editing of the Panorama segment, describing it as an “error of judgement”, and confirmed the programme will “not be broadcast again in this form on any BBC platforms.”
Director-General Tim Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness have both stepped down following the fallout.
Mr Davie, who has spent two decades at the corporation, said that while the BBC is delivering well, there had been “some mistakes made” and that as Director-General he had to take “ultimate responsibility.”
On Thursday, The Telegraph reported that a similar version of the edited clip had been used on BBC Newsnight more than two years earlier.
A freelancer who worked on the programme told the newspaper’s podcast that concerns raised about the footage during an editorial meeting were dismissed.
A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC holds itself to the highest editorial standards. This matter has been brought to our attention and we are now looking into it.”
According to The Daily T podcast, Mick Mulvaney, a guest on the Newsnight episode, said live on air that the footage “spliced together” separate parts of the speech.
In audio of the footage, Mr Trump's former chief of staff said: "Your video actually spliced together the presentation.
"He said we're going to go down and we're going to cheer on our senators and our house members... and that line about 'and we fight and fight like hell' is actually later in the speech, yet your video makes it look like those two things came together."
The lines are said to have been delivered 54 minutes apart.
"That's the type of messaging here that so many people in my country find frustrating is that it's hard to actually get the facts," Mr Mulvaney said.
"If we're going to have a debate about what this was and prevent it from happening again, I think part of that is to make sure we're straightforward in our presentation of what actually happened."
Concerns about the footage were flagged in a Newsnight editorial meeting the next day, a graphics designer for the episode, David Chaudoir, told The Telegraph's podcast hosts.
Mr Chaudoir said: "Sometimes there would be a little post-mortem of the show from the night before.
"Somebody brought it up saying: 'What happened with that clip of Trump?'
"One producer said: 'How did that go out'? 'Why did that happen?'
"And the editorial editor, not the VT (video tape) editor, kind of brushed it off and I thought that that was extraordinary, that something like that had gone out."
Mr Trump has said the BBC "defrauded the public" over the editing of his speech in the Panorama programme.
A legal letter, from Trump counsel Alejandro Brito, has demanded that "false, defamatory, disparaging and inflammatory statements" made about Mr Trump be retracted immediately.
The letter says if the BBC "does not comply", Mr Trump will be "left with no alternative but to enforce his legal and equitable rights, all of which are expressly reserved and are not waived, including by filing legal action for no less than 1,000,000,000 dollars in damages".
At Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey claimed Mr Trump was "trying to destroy our BBC" and called on Sir Keir to "tell President Trump to drop his demand for a billion-dollar settlement" and guarantee that he "will not get a single penny from British licence fee payers".
Sir Keir said: "I believe in a strong and independent BBC. Some would rather the BBC didn't exist. Some of them are sitting up there. I'm not one of them.
"In an age of disinformation, the argument for impartial British news service is stronger than ever, and where mistakes are made, they do need to get their house in order, and the BBC must uphold the highest standards to be accountable and correct errors quickly."
