BBC apologises to Trump over Panorama edit but refuses to pay compensation | UK News

The has apologised to US President Donald Trump for a Panorama episode which spliced parts of a speech together, but rejected his demands for compensation.

The corporation said the edit had given “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action” and said it would not show the programme again.

Lawyers for Trump have threatened to sue the for $1bn (£759m) in damages unless the corporation issues a retraction, apologises and compensates him.

The fallout from the scandal led to the resignations of director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness.

The has approached the White House for comment.

The apology comes after a second similarly edited clip, broadcast on Newsnight in 2022, was revealed by the Daily Telegraph.

In its Corrections and Clarifications section, published on Thursday evening, the said the Panorama programme had been reviewed after criticism of how Trump’s speech had been edited.

“We accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action,” it said.

A spokesperson said lawyers for the had written to President Trump’s legal team in response to a letter received on Sunday.

” chair Samir Shah has separately sent a personal letter to the White House making clear to President Trump that he and the corporation are sorry for the edit of the president’s speech on 6 January 2021, which featured in the programme,” they said.

“The has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary Trump: A Second Chance? on any platforms.

“While the sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim.”

In Trump’s speech on 6 January 2021, he said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

More than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell.”

In the Panorama programme from 2024, the clip shows him as saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

Speaking to Fox News, Trump said his 6 January 2021 speech had been “butchered” and the way it was presented had “defrauded” viewers.

The received the letter from Trump’s lawyers on Sunday. It demands a “full and fair retraction” of the documentary, an apology, and that the “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused”.

It had set a deadline of 22:00 GMT (17:00 EST) on Friday for the corporation to respond.

Earlier on Thursday, the was accused of another misleading edit of Trump’s 6 January 2021 speech, two years before the Panorama sequence aired.

On a Newsnight programme from 2022, the edit is a little different from Panorama.

Trump is shown as saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”

This was followed by a voiceover from presenter Kirsty Wark saying “and fight they did” over footage from the Capitol riots.

Responding to the clip on the same programme, former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who quit a diplomatic post and became a critic of Trump after describing the 6 January riots as an “attempted coup”, said the video had “spliced together” Trump’s speech.

“That line about ‘we fight and fight like hell’ is actually later in the speech and yet your video makes it look like those two things came together,” he said.

In response to Thursday’s story in the Telegraph, a spokesperson said the holds itself to the “highest editorial standards” and the matter was being looked into.

A spokesman for Trump’s legal team told The Telegraph it was “now clear that engaged in a pattern of defamation against President Trump”.