Aysu Bicer
14 November 2025•Update: 14 November 2025
LONDON
The BBC has apologized to US President Donald Trump for airing a documentary on its Panorama program that spliced together two separate lines from his Jan. 6, 2021 speech but said it will not pay compensation or accept his claim of defamation.
The corporation confirmed that it has written to Trump’s legal team after receiving a letter Sunday threatening to sue the broadcaster for $1 billion unless it issued a “full and fair retraction,” an apology and financial compensation.
“Lawyers for the BBC have written to President Trump's legal team in response to a letter received on Sunday,” a BBC spokesperson said Thursday.
“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 Jan. 6, 2021, which featured in the program.
“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.”
BBC director general Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness announced their resignations Sunday after days of pressure sparked by a leaked memo written by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee.
The memo made a series of claims, including that the documentary, which aired shortly before the 2024 US presidential election, had misleadingly edited a speech by Trump.
On Monday, Shah apologized for what he called the documentary’s “error of judgement,” saying that splicing parts of Trump’s speech together “did give the impression of a direct call for violent action” concerning the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
Trump’s legal team has written to the BBC, giving the corporation until Friday to apologize and “appropriately compensate” him.
Trump is known for aggressively suing news outlets whose coverage he disagrees with, including US networks CBS and ABC, which both reached multi-million dollar settlements in defamation lawsuits filed Trump.
