BBC says it will defend Trump defamation lawsuit over Panorama speech edit

The BBC has announced that it will protect a $5 billion (£3) budget. A 7bn) lawsuit brought by US President Donald Trump against the BBC over the rewrite of his 6 January 2021 address in a Panorama documentary. According to court documents filed in Florida, Trump accused the broadcaster of defamation and breaching a trade practices statute. Last month, the BBC apologised to Trump but denied his demands for compensation and said there was no basis for a defamation accusation. Trump's legal team accused the BBC of

intentionally, knowingly, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech.

We've already stated that we'll be supporting this lawsuit," a BBC spokesperson said.

We are not going to comment further on ongoing court hearings.

Last month, Trump said he planned to sue the BBC for the documentary, which aired in the United Kingdom ahead of the 2024 US election. Trump told reporters then of his plans, I think I have to do it.They cheated. The words that came out of my mouth were changed by the authors.

We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're gonna celebrate our brave senators and congressmen and women in his address on January 6th, 2021, well before a riot at the US Capitol.

And we fight,

the speaker said more than 50 minutes into the address. We fight like hell.

We're going to walk down to the Capitol,'

a clip from his Panorama show. and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.

The BBC confirmed that the editor had the wrong impression that he had made a call for violent action, but denied that there was a basis for a defamation lawsuit. A leaked internal BBC memo in November criticized how the speech was edited, resulting in the departures of BBC's director general Tim Davie and its head of news, Deborah Turness. The president's attorneys had written a long response to the president''s allegations long before Trump filed the lawsuit. There was no error in the editor, and Trump was not concerned by the program, as he was re-elected shortly after it aired. They also stated that the BBC did not have the privilege to and did not provide the Panorama program on its US channels. Although the documentary was available on BBC iPlayer, it was only available to viewers in the United Kingdom. Trump cites deals that the BBC had with other publishers to produce content, including one with a third-party media firm that reportedly had the rights to the documentary outside of the United Kingdom. The BBC hasn't replied to these allegations, nor has the corporation with the suspected distribution deal. People in Florida may have accessed the program using a VPN or by using the subscription service BritBox, according to the complaint.

The Panorama Documentary's fame, as well as significant rises in VPN usage in Florida since its debut, shows there is a fair chance that residents of Florida used the Documentary before the BBC had it deleted,

the complaint said. In the face of Trump's complaint, health minister Stephen Kinnock said the BBC was correct to stand firm in the face.

I think they've apologised for one or two of the mistakes made in the Panorama program,

he said, but they' have also been extremely clear that there is no reason to comment on Mr Trump's allegations regarding libel or defamation.

The Labour Party will always stand up for the BBC as a vitally important department,

he said. According to Nigel Huddleston, shadow culture secretary, the prime minister should

use his celebrity to warn the president that suing the BBC will negatively affect the licence fee payer. Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, begged Sir Keir Starmer to inform Trump that his decision to sue the BBC was

unacceptable.

This is the latest in a long line of lawsuits brought by Trump against news organizations. He has sued several media companies for substantial sums of money, including multi-million dollar settlements in some situations. According to Chris Ruddy, founder and chief executive of conservative US media company Newsmax Media and a Trump ally, it was impossible to win a defamation case in the United States becaUSe

the bar is very high. However, he suggested that the BBC should find an agreement to reduce the cost of litigation, which he estimated would be between $50 million (£37 million) and $100 million (USD74 million). Mark Damazer, a former BBC Radio controller, said it would be

very damaging to the BBC's image not to investigate the allegations. This is about the BBC's freedom, he said on BBC Radio Four's Today show, "this is about how the BBC survives and, unlike American media companies who have coughed up the funds, the BBC doesn't have commercial or commercial interests that depend on President Trump's beneficence in the White House.