Donald Trump says he will sue the BBC next week after the corporation apologised but declined to compensate him for its edited version of a 2021 speech broadcast by Panorama.

Trump confirms he will sue the BBC next week despite apology

Donald Trump has confirmed he will take legal action against the BBC over how his speech – ahead of the Capitol riot in 2021 – was edited for a documentary. Sabah Choudhry reports

US president, Donald Trump, has said that he still intends to take legal action against the BBC over the editing of a speech on a Panorama documentary.

“We’ll sue them from $1bn to $5bn, probably sometime next week,” he told reporters on board Air Force One.

“We have to do it, they’ve even admitted that they cheated. Not that they couldn’t have not done that. They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth,” he said.

President Trump said he had not spoken to UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, yet but planned to do so over the weekend.

He told reporters that, “the people of the UK are very angry about what happened…because it shows the BBC is fake news”.

The BBC apologised to Trump after splicing two clips together from a speech he delivered for an episode of Panorama – as the broadcaster was accused of another misleading edit.

When asked by GB News’ Bev Turner during a sit-down interview whether he would seek compensation, President Trump told Turner: “I think I have an obligation to do it.”

“I’m not looking to get into lawsuits, but I think I have an obligation to do it.

“This was so egregious if you don’t. You don’t stop it from happening again with other people.”

Earlier this week, Trump’s lawyers threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn in damages unless the corporation issued a retraction, apologised and compensated him.

The backlash led to the resignations of both BBC director-general Tim Davie and BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness from their roles.

Trump’s lawyers had given the BBC a deadline of 10pm on November 14 to respond, which it did.

On Thursday, the broadcaster officially apologised to the US president and added that it was an “error of judgement” and the programme will “not be broadcast again in this form on any BBC platforms”.

Talking to GB News on Friday, President Trump said: “They wrote me a nice letter. ‘We apologise’. But when you say it’s unintentional, I guess if it’s unintentional you don’t apologise.”

The BBC also said it was looking into fresh allegations, published in The Telegraph, that its Newsnight show also selectively edited footage of the same speech in a report broadcast in June 2022.

A spokesperson said that “the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited,” but they also added that “we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim”.

Roger Mosey, former director of news at the BBC, told ITV News Trump was “playing politics”.
“Of course, He has a right to be aggrieved by the way the BBC edited the Panorama programme. If he so aggrieve,d it’s worth £5 billion? I don’t quite believe that,” he said.

“He didn’t even know he had been libelled in this way until a week ago and somehow it has become the most damaging thing in his career.”

What’s next?

Legal experts say the president faces significant obstacles in taking the case to court in the UK or the US.

Trump would need to prove three major components – that the content published was factually false in a defamatory way; that he suffered harm due to the false and defamatory coverage; and that the media organisation knew it was false and acted with “actual malice”.

The deadline to bring the case to UK courts on defamation in the UK is one year, which has already expired because the documentary aired in October 2024.

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While Florida law has a two-year limit, bringing a defamation case in America will mean Trump faces a tougher legal standard.

If Trump sues in Florida, he would need to establish that the BBC Panorama documentary was available there. Because the documentary was not shown in the US, it would be hard to show that Americans thought less of the president because of a programme they could not watch.

A pressing question for the UK now is how Starmer will respond to this political quagmire.

The BBC is a public corporation, not a state broadcaster, and is editorially and operationally independent of the government.

If Starmer does not come to the aid of the British state broadcaster, he risks leaving the BBC embroiled in a time-consuming and expensive battle against President Trump, which could cost the British taxpayers. If he does try to dissuade Trump from his lawsuit, he compromises the foundational principle of the BBC’s editorial independence.