US President Donald Trump (AP)
After the BBC came under scrutiny for editing Donald Trump’s 6 January 2021 speech, the US President announced that he plans to take legal action against the broadcaster.The BBC apologised for the edit, saying it had “unintentionally given the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action,” but the corporation said it would not offer financial compensation. The controversy also led to the resignations of BBC director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness.However, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday evening, Trump said, “We’ll sue them for anywhere between $1bn and $5bn probably sometime next week.” He added, “I think I have to do it. They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth,” as quoted by BBC.Trump said he had not yet discussed the issue with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer but planned to call him over the weekend. Earlier in the week, his lawyers had warned the BBC they would sue for $1 billion unless it retracted the edit, apologised and compensated him. The BBC’s apology came hours after a second similarly edited clip, broadcast on Newsnight in 2022, was reported by the Daily Telegraph. In its Corrections and Clarifications section, the BBC said, “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. “A BBC spokesperson said lawyers had responded to a letter from Trump’s team and added, “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 broadcaster also outlined five main arguments explaining why it believed it did not have a case to answer.In an interview aired on GB News on Saturday, recorded before he confirmed his intention to sue, Trump said, “I’ve been doing this for a long time, I’ve never seen anything like that. That’s, that’s the most egregious. I think that was worse than the Kamala thing with CBS and 60 Minutes.”He added, “I think I have an obligation to do it. If you don’t do it, you don’t stop it from happening again with other people.”In July, US media company Paramount Global agreed to pay $16 million (13.5 million pounds) to settle a separate legal dispute with Trump involving an interview broadcast on CBS with former vice-president Kamala Harris.
