Donald Trump has made good on his threat to file a lawsuit against the BBC over its editing of a speech he made. Here the Guardian examines some of the key passages in the claim.
Claim: Malicious and defamatory
“As set forth in a damning and recently leaked BBC internal whistleblower document, the BBC intentionally used the Panorama documentary to maliciously, falsely, and defamatorily make it appear that President Trump explicitly called for violent action and rioting, and that he ‘said something he did not’.”
The “internal whistleblower document” was a memo sent to the board by Michael Prescott, a former independent external adviser to the BBC. The memo made no finding of malice although did describe the nature of the programme as being “anti-Trump” and that the splicing together of the clips “materially misled viewers”.
The issue of malice is important because public figures in the US must prove actual malice. The BBC argues that the edit was done to shorten a long clip and not with malice.
Claim: VPN use to access documentary
“The Panorama documentary’s publicity, coupled with significant increases in VPN usage in Florida since its debut, establishes the immense likelihood that citizens of Florida accessed the documentary before the BBC had it removed.”
Trump potentially needs to establish the BBC Panorama documentary was available in Florida to able to sue there, otherwise it might not be deemed to be the appropriate jurisdiction for the case.
The BBC says that it did not distribute the Panorama episode on its US channels and, when made available on BBC iPlayer, it was geographically restricted to viewers in the UK.
As well as jurisdiction, whether anyone – and if so, how many – watched it, would affect the level of reputational harm (if any) Trump could claim had been caused to him.
Claim: Objectivity
“The lack of any effort by the BBC to publish content even remotely resembling objective journalism, or to maintain even a slight semblance of objectivity in the Panorama documentary, demonstrates that the BBC had no regard for the truth about President Trump, and that the doctoring of his speech was not inadvertent, but instead was an intentional component of the BBC’s effort to craft as one-sided an impression and narrative against President Trump as possible.”
The BBC has said that the clip “was never meant to be considered in isolation. Rather, it was 12 seconds within an hour-long programme, which also contained lots of Trump supporters.”
Claim: Truss and bias
“No less an authority than the United Kingdom’s former prime minister Liz Truss discussed this bias, the need to hold the BBC accountable, and the BBC’s pattern of actual malice. Remarked Truss: ‘[The BBC] is a huge problem. They’ve lied, they’ve cheated, they’ve fiddled with footage, especially in the case of President Trump, but also covering up what’s happening in Britain whether it’s mass migration, whether it’s our economic problems, they are always biased towards the left …’”
The citing of Truss as a relevant authority is likely to raise eyebrows in the UK given she suffered the ignominy of being the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister by some distance, after a disastrous 45 days in office.
Truss is not an expert on actual malice nor a disinterested party. She has recently been an enthusiastic backer of Trump.
Claim: Reputational harm
“The injury to President Trump’s business and personal reputation inflicted by these defendants, and their efforts to falsely, maliciously and defamatorily portray President Trump as a violent insurrectionist, continue into the present, thereby causing massive economic damage to his brand value and significant damage and injury to his future financial prospects, in addition to continuing to harm his reputation as president of the United States of America.”
The BBC is believed to argue that the programme could not have caused the US president “overwhelming reputational harm” as he went on to win the US presidential election after it was aired, winning Florida by the largest majority versus a Democrat candidate since 2004.
Given Trump’s polarising nature and that his role in the Capitol Hill insurrection has been well played out in the US, even if people in the US saw the documentary, it is questionable whether anyone would change their mind about him.
