Trump Threatens to Sue BBC for $1B; Top Execs Quit Over Defamatory Documentary

The BBC is facing more than the resignation of two top executives following the revelation that the network “doctored” President Donald Trump’s speech to supporters on January 6, 2021.

Deborah Turness, the chief executive of BBC News, and BBC Director General Tim Davie quit their jobs yesterday, less than a week after The Telegraph reported that the network’s Panorama documentary, Trump: A Second Chance? twisted the president’s words to make it appear as if he instructed them to start an “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol.

Plus, the president’s attorney notified the far-left, anti-British, hate-Trump network that absent an apology and retraction, legal trouble is ahead. Trump will sue for $1 billion if BBC doesn’t admit fault, apologize, and “appropriately compensate” him.

The Smear Documentary 

Davie’s and Turness’ fortunes at the network nosedived after The Telegraph divulged a whistleblower memorandum that explained how the documentary’s slick editing falsified the speech.

“A Panorama programme, broadcast a week before the [2024] US election, ‘completely misled’ viewers by showing the president telling supporters he was going to walk to the Capitol with them to ‘fight like hell,’ when in fact he said he would walk with them ‘to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,’” the newspaper explained.

The leftist program put words in Trump’s mouth, the dossier reported, by making him “‘say’ things [he] never actually said.” A network official or officials melded words from the speech’s beginning with those he uttered “nearly an hour later.”

Here is what Trump says in the footage from Trump: A Second Chance?:

We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you and we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.

The dossier explains what Trump really said, the newspaper continued:

In reality, the first part of Trump’s speech: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you,” came 15 minutes into the speech. The second half of the sentence that was aired by Panorama, “and we fight. We fight like hell…” came 54 minutes later.

Fifteen minutes into the speech, Trump actually said: “We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

It was completely misleading to edit the clip in the way Panorama aired it. The fact that he did not explicitly exhort supporters to go down and fight at Capitol Hill was one of the reasons there were no federal charges for incitement to riot.

Thus did viewers likely believe that Trump urged supporters to do what some did at the mostly peaceful protest.

Davie took responsibility for the fakery.

“Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable,” he wrote in an email to network staffers:

While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision [to resign]. Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as director general I have to take ultimate responsibility.

Wrote Turness:

I have taken the difficult decision that it will no longer be my role to lead you in the collective vision that we all have: to pursue the truth with no agenda. …

In public life leaders need to be fully accountable, and that is why I am stepping down. While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.

Lawsuit Ahead?

Turness might well believe that “recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong,” and her fellow travelers at The New York Times and The Washington Post are undoubtedly equally deluded.

That aside, Trump attorney Alejandro Brito demanded several items in his letter to the network.

“The timing of the fabricated documentary is evident,” Brito wrote, noting that BBC broadcast the falsehood on October 28, 2020, eight days before the presidential election:

The BBC’s reckless disregard for the truth underscores the actual malice behind the decision to publish the wrongful content, given the plain falsity of the statements. Accordingly, President Trump hereby demands that you: (1) immediately issue a full and fair retraction of the documentary and any and all other false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements about President Trump in as conspicuous a manner as they were originally published; (2) immediately issue an apology for the false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements about President Trump; and (3) appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused.

Brito also demanded that BBC, all its employees, and anyone else involved in the documentary “preserve any and all evidence related in any way to the” hit piece.

BBC Chairman Samir Shah has apologized for the documentary, but not to President Trump.

“This issue has led to over 500 complaints,” Shah wrote to Dame Caroline Dinenage, chief of the House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport Committee:

These are now being dealt with in the normal way. It has also prompted further reflection by the BBC. The conclusion of that deliberation is that we accept that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action. The BBC would like to apologise for that error of judgement.

Shah and his colleagues have until November 14 at 5 p.m. to retract and apologize for the documentary’s defamatory falsehoods, Trump’s attorney warned. Otherwise, the president “will be left with no alternative” but sue the network for $1 billion.

H/T: The Guardian, The Washington Post