BBC Apologizes to President Trump for Second Time – But They Don’t See “Defamation Claim”

The BBC is apologizing again to President Trump after lawyers representing his interests sent a letter threatening legal action on his behalf.

The legal threats are about a spliced edit of Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, 2021, that appeared in the network’s program “Trump: A Second Chance?” In the edited clip, the president is framed to say “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”

However, in reality, those phrases were delivered almost an hour apart, and the footage omitted the part where President Trump tells supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” The BBC responded to the first public criticism by stating:

BBC – “This programme was reviewed after criticism of how President Donald Trump’s 6th January 2021 speech was edited.

During that sequence, we showed excerpts taken from different parts of the speech. However, 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.

The BBC would like to apologise to President Trump for that error of judgement. This programme was not scheduled to be re-broadcast and will not be broadcast again in this form on any BBC platforms.” [SOURCE]

The BBC Media Center then posted a public notification following the letter received from President Trump’s legal team.

BBC – “Lawyers for the BBC have written to President Trump’s legal team in response to a letter received on Sunday.

“BBC 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.

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

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