Trump threatens to sue BBC over misleading edit of January 6 speech
The outgoing CEO of BBC News resigned this weekend over accusations that the news organization had misleadingly edited a speech by President Trump.
By Brian Stelter, CNN
(CNN) — The BBC is embroiled in a massive political fight over its future, with conservatives capitalizing on an editing screw-up and denouncing the British broadcaster while liberals argue that the institution is flawed but worth defending.
On Monday, Trump intensified the pressure by sending a threatening legal letter to the news organization over the misleading edit in a one-year-old documentary about his reelection campaign.
A BBC spokesperson told CNN that “we will review the letter and respond directly in due course.”
Trump has sent several legal letters to other news organizations, including CNN, during his second term in office.
The president’s legal threats often don’t amount to anything, but he does have pending lawsuits against the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Des Moines Register.
Earlier Monday, BBC Chair Samir Shah issued a belated apology for the “error of judgment” with the October 2024 documentary. BBC director-general Tim Davie and BBC News chief Deborah Turness tendered their resignations on Sunday as stories about the edit scandal consumed British media.
There is no indication that the misleading edit was politically motivated. Nor is there any reason to believe that Davie and Turness knew about it ahead of time.
However, a lawyer for Trump asserted Monday that the BBC defamed the president “by intentionally and deceitfully editing its documentary in order to try and interfere in the Presidential Election.”
The letter, obtained by CNN, charges the broadcaster with defamation and claims that Trump has suffered “overwhelming financial and reputational harm,” despite no one seeming to call out the error at the time of the broadcast.
Last week, The Telegraph, a longtime source of anti-BBC commentary, wrote about an “internal report” revealing the bad edit, and the story has since snowballed.
The pre-election film spliced together different parts of Trump’s infamous January 6 speech at the Ellipse to make it sound like Trump told the crowd he would walk with them to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”
The revelation about the misleading edit has contributed to an ongoing political fight over the BBC’s funding and future, with conservatives using the error as a new opportunity to denounce the British broadcaster.
“The BBC is facing a coordinated, politically motivated attack,” BBC veteran John Simpson wrote on X Sunday night. He praised Davie and Turness and said, “We’ve now got a real fight on our hands to defend public service broadcasting, because that’s under threat too.”
The-CNN-Wire
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Kara Scannell and Christian Edwards contributed reporting.
