The BBC on Thursday issued a formal apology to US President Donald Trump following revelations that its Panorama documentary “Trump: A Second Chance?” misrepresented his January 6, 2021 speech by splicing together separate excerpts.
The edit, the corporation admitted, gave “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.” The BBC stated it will not rebroadcast the program.
The apology comes amid mounting legal pressure from Trump’s legal team, which has threatened a $1 billion lawsuit unless the BBC issues a full retraction, apology, and financial compensation. The BBC has rejected the demand, asserting there is no basis for a defamation claim.
In a statement published Thursday in its Corrections and Clarifications section, the BBC acknowledged that the edit “unintentionally created the impression” of a continuous speech segment. BBC chair Samir Shah also sent a personal letter to the White House expressing regret over the edit.
The controversy has already led to the resignations of BBC Director General Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness.
The Panorama clip in question combined two separate lines from Trump’s speech: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol…” and “We fight. We fight like hell,” spoken more than 50 minutes apart.
In a Fox News interview which aired on Tuesday, Trump said when asked if he would sue the British broadcaster, “I think I have an obligation to do it because you can't allow people to do that. They defrauded the public and they've admitted it.”
Meanwhile, the BBC said it is investigating a possible second instance in which a speech by Trump was edited in a misleading manner.
The investigation was launched after The Telegraph reported that the broadcaster had aired another report, in June, 2022 on its “Newsnight” program, in which phrases spoken at different points in a speech by Trump from January 6, 2021 were edited together to make it appear as if the outgoing president was urging his supporters to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”
“This matter has been brought to our attention and we are now looking into it,” said a BBC spokesperson.
In addition to the incident involving Trump’s speech, the BBC has continuously come under fire over its anti-Israel bias, which has reared its head even more since October 7, 2023.
In November of 2023, the corporation published an apology after falsely claiming that IDF troops were targeting medical teams in battles in and around the Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
Before that, the BBC falsely accused Israel of being responsible for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza, which the IDF proved was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket. The network later acknowledged that “it was false to speculate” on the explosion.
Earlier this year, the BBC faced mounting scrutiny for using the son of a senior Hamas official as a narrator in its documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone.”
Following the criticism, the British broadcaster acknowledged that there were “serious flaws” in the program.
Several weeks ago, the BBC issued an apology after internal backlash over an email sent to staff referring to Hamas’s October 7 massacre as an “escalation.”