Late this Thursday, the BBC tried the difficult balance of trying to be conciliatory with Donald Trump without bowing to all of his demands. The public corporation has apologized to the American president for the error made in the documentary broadcast a year ago, in which a speech by the president was misleadingly edited, but the entity refuses to compensate him financially for the error.
“BBC lawyers have written to President Trump’s legal team in response to the letter received last Sunday. BBC Chairman Shamir Shah has separately sent a personal letter to the White House making it clear to President Trump that he and the corporation regret the editing of the president’s January 6, 2021 speech, which appeared on the program [Panorama]. The BBC has no intention of rebroadcasting the documentary Trump: a second chance? on any of its platforms,” said a spokesperson for the corporation. “Although the BBC regrets the way in which the cuts of the speech were edited, it completely rejects that there is any basis for a defamation lawsuit,” he adds.
The crisis unleashed by the controversial broadcast has put the public corporation in the eye of the storm, and has caused a deep political division in the United Kingdom.
No one questions the clumsiness and error of judgment in the editing of the speech, in which two fragments of Trump’s speech to his people were pasted as if they were continuous into it. The montage of that audio transmitted the false literality of a direct order from Trump to his people to attack the headquarters of Congress.
Although the program was broadcast more than a year ago and refers to events that occurred half a decade ago, it has now been, through an exclusive from the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, of a conservative nature, when a crisis has broken out that has put an end to .
The apologies come after the Telegraph has published that the same manipulated cut of the president’s speech was used two years before the program aired Panorama in another BBC space, Newsnightand that one of the guests present on the set expressed his complaints about the editing of the words of the speech.
It has not been enough of a response for Trump, who, through his lawyers, . It remains to be seen if the US president goes ahead with his lawsuit, for which he intends to demand compensation of 1 billion dollars (870 million euros) from the BBC.
Trump already suggested this week in an interview on the US network Fox News that he would have no choice but to go to court. His intention, if he is not satisfied with the apology presented by the British public broadcaster, would be to go to a court in Florida, where he has his legal residence.
There are many experts who doubt the viability of a maneuver like that due to the chosen jurisdiction. Trump has chosen Florida because the statute of limitations for the alleged crime is two years, not one as in the British courts. But the program Panorama It was never broadcast in the United States, where there is no access to the streaming platform either. streaming where the documentary was still available until recently.
Until now, the doctrine of the US courts has been very rigorous when it comes to defending freedom of information, enshrined in the first amendment of its Constitution and in rulings that have established jurisprudence.
Trump’s strategy consists of cornering the media that he finds uncomfortable in court, and some of them, and , have decided to fold and agree to multimillion-dollar out-of-court settlements rather than fight a long and expensive legal battle.
The BBC case is, however, loaded with powerful symbolism. The public chain. There are many voices within the United Kingdom that have called on the public corporation to put its foot down and not give in to the pressures of the American president.
