{"id":369377,"date":"2025-11-10T14:47:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T14:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/369377\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T14:47:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T14:47:13","slug":"bbc-says-trump-threatened-to-sue-over-how-a-program-edited-his-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/369377\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC says Trump threatened to sue over how a program edited his speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON (AP) \u2014 The BBC<\/a> reported Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump has sent a letter threatening legal action over the way a speech he made was edited in a documentary aired by the British broadcaster.<\/p>\n

The BBC\u2019s top executive and its head of news both quit<\/a> Sunday over accusations of bias and misleading editing of a speech Trump delivered on Jan. 6, 2021, before a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.<\/p>\n

Asked about a letter from Trump threatening legal action over the incident, the BBC said in a statement on Monday that \u201cwe will review the letter and respond directly in due course.\u201d It did not provide further details.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Trump welcomed the resignations of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness, saying the way his speech was edited was an attempt to \u201cstep on the scales of a Presidential Election.\u201d <\/p>\n

The hourlong documentary \u2014 titled \u201cTrump: A Second Chance?\u201d \u2014 was broadcast as part of the BBC\u2019s \u201cPanorama\u201d series days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and \u201cfight like hell.\u201d Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.<\/p>\n

In a resignation letter to staff, Davie said: \u201cThere have been some mistakes made and as director-general I have to take ultimate responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turness said the controversy was damaging the BBC, and she quit \u201cbecause the buck stops with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turness defended the organization\u2019s journalists against allegations of bias.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur journalists are hardworking people who strive for impartiality, and I will stand by their journalism,\u201d she said Monday. \u201cThere is no institutional bias. Mistakes are made, but there\u2019s no institutional bias.\u201d<\/p>\n

BBC chairman Samir Shah apologized Monday for the broadcaster\u2019s \u201cerror of judgment,\u201d saying the broadcaster \u201caccept that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump posted a link to a Daily Telegraph story about the speech-editing on his Truth Social network, thanking the newspaper \u201cfor exposing these Corrupt \u2018Journalists.\u2019 These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election.\u201d He called that \u201ca terrible thing for Democracy!\u201d<\/p>\n

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt<\/a> reacted on X, posting a screen grab of an article headlined \u201cTrump goes to war with \u2018fake news\u2019 BBC\u201d beside another about Davie\u2019s resignation, with the words \u201cshot\u201d and \u201cchaser.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump speech edited<\/p>\n

Pressure on the broadcaster\u2019s top executives has been growing since the right-leaning Daily Telegraph published parts of a dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, who had been hired to advise the BBC on standards and guidelines.<\/p>\n

As well as the Trump edit, it criticized the BBC\u2019s coverage of transgender issues and raised concerns of anti-Israel bias in the BBC\u2019s Arabic service.<\/p>\n

The \u201cPanorama\u201d episode showed an edited clip from the January 2021 speech in which Trump claimed the 2020 presidential election had been rigged. Trump is shown saying: \u201cWe\u2019re going to walk down to the Capitol and I\u2019ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to video and a transcript from Trump\u2019s comments that day<\/a>, he said:\u202f \u201cI\u2019ll be there with you, we\u2019re going to walk down, we\u2019re going to walk down. Anyone you want, but I think right here, we\u2019re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we\u2019re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we\u2019re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you\u2019ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump used the \u201cfight like hell\u201d phrase toward the end of the speech, but without referencing the Capitol.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe fight like hell. And if you don\u2019t fight like hell, you\u2019re not going to have a country anymore,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

In a letter to Parliament\u2019s Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Shah said the purpose of editing Trump\u2019s words had been \u201cto convey the message of the speech\u201d so that viewers could understand how it had been received by Trump\u2019s supporters and what was happening on the ground.<\/p>\n

He said the program had not attracted \u201csignificant audience feedback\u201d when it first aired but had drawn more than 500 complaints since Prescott\u2019s dossier was made public.<\/p>\n

Shah acknowledged in a BBC interview that \u201cit would have been better to have acted earlier. But we didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

A national institution<\/p>\n

The 103-year-old BBC faces greater scrutiny than other broadcasters \u2014 and criticism from its commercial rivals \u2014 because of its status as a national institution funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds ($230) paid by all households who watch live TV or any BBC content.<\/p>\n

The broadcaster is bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial, and critics are quick to point out when they think it has failed. It\u2019s frequently a political football, with conservatives seeing a leftist slant in its news output and some liberals accusing it of having a conservative bias.<\/p>\n

It has also been criticized from all angles over its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. In February, the BBC removed a documentary about Gaza<\/a> from its streaming service after it emerged that the child narrator was the son of an official in the Hamas-led government.<\/p>\n

Governments of both left and right have long been accused of meddling with the broadcaster, which is overseen by a board that includes both BBC nominees and government appointees.<\/p>\n

Some defenders of the BBC allege that members of the board appointed under previous Conservative governments have been undermining the corporation from within.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Keir Starmer\u2019s spokesman, Tom Wells, said the center-left Labour Party government supports \u201ca strong, independent BBC\u201d and doesn\u2019t think the broadcaster is biased.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it is important that the BBC acts to maintain trust and corrects mistakes quickly when they occur,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 The BBC reported Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump has sent a letter threatening legal…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":369378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[6531,175983,84,69,90,171,57,99,373,8133,17723,177847,50,80,22014,178300,178301,67,132,68,93,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-369377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-bbc","10":"tag-deborah-turness","11":"tag-district-of-columbia","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-elections","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-general-news","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-israel-hamas-war","18":"tag-karoline-leavitt","19":"tag-keir-starmer","20":"tag-michael-prescott","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-politics","23":"tag-public-media","24":"tag-samir-shah","25":"tag-tom-wells","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-unitedstates","28":"tag-us","29":"tag-washington-news","30":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115525952800185431","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}