BBC says will fight Trump’s US$10 billion defamation lawsuit

The BBC said on Tuesday (Dec 16) it would fight a US$10 billion lawsuit brought by United States President Donald Trump against the British broadcaster over a documentary that edited his 2021 speech ahead of the US Capitol riot.

“As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case,” a BBC spokesperson said in a statement sent to AFP, adding the company would not be making “further comment on ongoing legal proceedings”.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Miami, seeks “damages in an amount not less than US$5,000,000,000” for each of two counts against the British broadcaster, for alleged defamation and violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

The video that triggered the lawsuit spliced together two separate sections of Trump’s speech on Jan 6, 2021, in a way that made it appear he explicitly urged supporters to attack the Capitol, where lawmakers were certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.

The lawsuit comes as the United Kingdom government on Tuesday launched the politically sensitive review of the BBC’s Royal Charter, which outlines the corporation’s funding and governance and needs to be renewed in 2027.

As part of the review, it launched a public consultation on issues including the role of “accuracy” in the BBC’s mission and contentious reforms to the corporation’s funding model, which currently relies on a mandatory fee for anyone in the country who watches television.

Minister Stephen Kinnock stressed after the lawsuit was filed that the UK government “is a massive supporter of the BBC”.

The BBC has “been very clear that there is no case to answer in terms of Mr Trump’s accusation on the broader point of libel or defamation. I think it’s right the BBC stands firm on that point”, Kinnock told Sky News on Tuesday.

Trump, 79, had said the lawsuit was imminent, claiming the BBC had “put words in my mouth”, even positing that “they used AI or something”.

The documentary at issue aired last year before the 2024 election, on the BBC’s Panorama flagship current affairs program.

APOLOGY LETTER

“The formerly respected and now disgraced BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 presidential election,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement to AFP.

“The BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda,” the statement added.

The BBC, whose audience extends well beyond the UK, faced a period of turmoil last month after a media report brought renewed attention to the edited clip.

The scandal led the BBC director general, Tim Davie, and the organisation’s top news executive, Deborah Turness, to resign.

Trump’s lawsuit says the edited speech in the documentary was “fabricated and aired by the defendants one week before the 2024 presidential election in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment”.

The BBC has denied Trump’s claims of legal defamation, though BBC chairman Samir Shah has sent Trump a letter of apology.

Shah also told a UK parliamentary committee last month that the broadcaster should have acted sooner to acknowledge its mistake after the error was disclosed in a memo, which was leaked to The Daily Telegraph newspaper.

The BBC lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal actions Trump has taken against media companies in recent years, several of which have led to multi-million-dollar settlements.

Source: AFP

- Agencies