The BBC has apologised to Donald Trump over the editing of a Panorama documentary that led to the resignation of its director general, Tim Davie, and the BBC News chief, Deborah Turness.
However, the corporation has rejected his demands for compensation, after lawyers for Trump threatened to sue for $1bn (£760m) in damages unless the BBC issued a retraction, apologised and settled with him.
The BBC has also agreed not to show the edition of Panorama again.
“Lawyers for the BBC have written to President Trump’s legal team in response to a letter received on Sunday,” a BBC spokesperson said. “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.
“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.”
The BBC has been considering how to respond to the legal threat since Trump’s angry reaction to the editing of the programme.
However, it is thought that the BBC has also been advised that it has a strong legal case. It remains to be seen how Trump will now respond.
It comes after the BBC concluded there was no reason not to apologise more personally to President Trump, given Shah had already said sorry for the edit and described it as giving the impression “of a direct call for violent action”.
The corporation is already reeling from the resignations of Davie and Turness, which followed the splicing together of the Trump speech in an edition of Panorama last year.
The programme was broadcast a week before the US election. The spliced clip suggested that Trump told the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.” The words were taken from sections of his speech almost an hour apart.
Concerns about the Panorama cut were raised in a memo by Michael Prescott, a former independent external adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee. He left the role in the summer. The memo drew on instances Prescott said showed a systemic bias at the BBC, which the corporation has denied.
Some in the BBC argue the Panorama edit did not change the meaning of the speech significantly, but others disagree. Shah has since apologised, while Davie said responsibility had to be taken for errors revealed in the Prescott memo.
It has been suggested Trump would file the case in a Florida court. Legal experts have questioned his chances of victory, given Florida’s liberal libel laws and the fact the Panorama episode was not available in the state.
The broadcast was too long ago to take legal action in the UK. Trump would have to prove he was damaged by the programme.
Since the Panorama edit was revealed, BBC’s Newsnight was also accused of editing the same Trump speech in a way that made it appear he made a more explicit call for violent protest before the Capitol riots.
The Telegraph said it had found an edition of Newsnight from 2022 that contained a splicing together of the speech in a similar way. It did not appear that the edit alerted viewers to the cut.
It spliced together a section of Trump’s speech on the day of the riots, in which he urged supporters to walk to the Capitol building, with a later segment of the address in which he urged them to “fight like hell”.
A former White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, criticised the BBC on air at the time for splicing together the footage. “Your video actually spliced together the presentation,” he said. “That line about ‘and we fight and fight like hell’ is actually later in the speech.”
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.”
On Thursday, the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, said his party had written to the prime minister, Keir Starmer, calling on him to demand that Trump “drop his ludicrous $1bn lawsuit against the BBC”. Trump has not yet filed a lawsuit, despite previous reports.
In another post on X, Davey said Trump “wants to destroy the BBC” and urged people to join his campaign, calling on the corporation to “fairly balance its political news coverage all year round, not just at election time”.
He also said the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, who accused the BBC of being “infected with leftwing bias”, is “egging [Trump] on”.
There have been reports that Reform has pulled out of a BBC documentary about the party because of the controversy over the edited speech.
