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This is the Daily ohs oh, now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Tuesday, the eighteenth of November. I'm Emma Gillespie.
I'm Lucy Tassel.
US President Donald Trump has announced plans to sue the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation, for up to seven point five billion Ossie dollars. It comes after the British broadcaster apologized to Donald Trump over an allegedly misleading edit of a speech he gave on the sixth of January twenty twenty one, the day of the deadly Washington insurrection. But the BBC
has rejected compensation claims from Trump's lawyers. And today we'll explain that the speech edit in question, the fallout, and whether Trump is likely to succeed in his action against the broadcaster.
Emma, this story has been in the global spotlight for a little over a week now. But let's go back. So much is changing so fast. Where did this actually start?
I think to understand all the pieces of the puzzle, we probably need to take it all the way back to twenty twenty. That was the year that Donald Trump lost his reelection bid to Joe Biden. And you may remember that Trump initially refused to concede defeat. He alleged election fraud and was accused of spreading false claims and obstructing the transition of power to President Biden. All of that came to a head on the sixth of January twenty twenty one, when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol
and attempted to block official procedures confirming Biden's victory. It was a huge day in global media in US history. Seven people ended up dying as a result of the riots, and there have been countless inquiries and questions ever since in terms of the conduct that led to that.
So then what's the connection between January sixth and the BBC documentary.
So about a week before the US presidential election in November last year, So fast forward to twenty twenty four, the BBC's flagship current affairs program, a show called Panorama, aired an episode called Trump a Second Chance question Mark. So the documentary was essentially analyzing Trump's history and you know, his reelection bid, whether or not it was looking likely to succeed, And part of painting that picture included a
bit of analysis around the Jan six riots. So the episode showed excerpts of Donald Trump's speech on that day in twenty twenty one, the day his support had stormed the Capitol, and the episode was later accused of appearing to suggest that Trump encouraged the attack. So at the time after the Panorama episode aired, an independent editorial standards advisor wrote to the BBC board describing the program as
quote neither balanced nor impartial. Now that is important as it retains to the BBC because it is the public broadcaster in the UK. British citizens residents pay a licensing fee to keep it running and it's held to certain standards like our ABC, certain editorial standards about its news
coverage and impartiality. But this review of the Panorama episode found that it quotes spliced together two clips from separate parts of a speech that Trump made almost an hour apart to suggest quote Trump said something he did not. The report also alleged that BBC managers dismissed concerns raised about this edit. And we've only recently become aware of all of this because this review, that report by the
independent advisor was leaked to the Telegraph. A conservative British newspaper and published earlier this month.
What did the White House say in response to this report?
The Trump administration and the White House has been very critical of the BBC. In response, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt called the edit election interference. She said it was designed to influence the results of the twenty twenty four election, given the documentary aired just days before American voters headed to the polls. Trump has been similarly critical.
He posted on truth social saying the BBC had been caught red handed in his words, and calling for action against what he described as fake news.
What has been the fallout at the BBC over this.
It's been pretty significant. So we saw two senior news executives resign on the tenth of November, and then on Friday, the BBC issued a formal apology to Donald Trump. The Director General of the broadcaster, Tim Davies, said the edit quote did not meet the BBC's editorial standards. He said the corporation apologizes for this error and announced that the BBC has launched an internal review into the processes into
the decision behind the edit. To kind of paint more of a picture to understand that Panorama episode.
We'll be right back with more on this story, Emma, but first a quick word from our sponsor. Now we're at the point of there being a possible lawsuit. When did Trump threaten to sue and what are his grounds.
Trump's lawyers sent a letter to the BBC actually last week, demanding compensation. They've claimed that the edit is defamatory, that it damaged Trump's reputation, and they've argued that the doco portrays him as inciting violence. On January sixth, which Trump has consistently denied since twenty twenty one, Trump gave a little bit more of an indication about the sum of money he is seeking in terms of the scale of these alleged damages. Here's a little bit of what he
said to reporters aboard Air Force one over the weekend. Well, we'll sue them.
We'll sue them for anywhere between a bidion and five billion dollars, probably sometime next week. So now the BBC has apologized to Trump, but have they responded to these threats of legal action.
The BBC has rejected the compensation claims. It needs to be said. So they did issue that apology. They've made it clear that they understand the editing of that Panorama episode was perhaps misleading, but they've also made it clear they will not be paying these billions in dollars that Trump is demanding as compensation. A BBC spokesperson said the
corporation does take its editorial standards seriously. It's apologized for the error, but that they believe Trump's compensation demands are without merit.
This is all centering on a BBC documentary that aired in the UK on UK public television in November twenty twenty four. Did it ever actually air anywhere else?
This is a really important detail because no, the Panorama documentary never aired in the US. It was broadcast, as you said, Lucy, on BBC one. In the US, it was available on the BBC's streaming platform, a service called iPlayer that is primarily accessible in the UK. You could suggest that there's a gray area with VPNs. Some Americans may have been able to access it through VPNs or other means, but there was no official US broadcast or
distribution of the program. The reason that that is significant is if Trump is proceeding with legal action, the US has very strong protections for freedom of speech and the press. The standard for proving defamation there, particularly for public figures like Trump, is extremely high, and there would be a bit of a gap that would need to be filled or prosecutors would need to be enlightened as to why
a UK program would matter to a US election. In the UK, though the burden of proof is different, there are fewer protections for publishers compared to the US. But it does seem Trump wants to sue in the US. That appears to be what he's indicating, and US courts generally won't hear defamation cases about material that was only
published in another country. If the BBC had done a distribution deal with a broadcaster like the PBS, and it had played to US audiences on a public service network, we might be talking about a different set of circumstances.
What does that mean for Trump's legal options?
Then he could try to file a suit in the UK, but he would need to show that he suffered serious harm to his reputation because of the documentary. Now, given that Trump went ahead and won the election after the doco aired, it'd be difficult to argue that he suffered any serious reputational or financial harms because of it.
Could he argue something along the lines of the edit being misleading, with that strengthen his case.
In some way potentially, But the BBC has already acknowledged that the edits didn't meet its standards. I do think it's important to note, though, that acknowledge of a mistake is not an knowledge of defamation. They have an admitted defamation. The challenge here is that the words in the edit, so the way the speech was edited together, were still Trump's own words. It's not as though, you know, you
sometimes hear about the way Reality TV is produced. A Frankenstein editor in a phrase that might refer to when you can hear that seven different words from seven different contexts are stitched together as one sentence. These were Trump's words from his speech. So legal experts have been pretty skeptical about his chances of success, particularly if he tries to sue in the US. He also, it has to be noted, has a long history of these kinds of threats.
You know, Trump is no stranger to a civil lawsuit. He regularly threatens news organizations. Many of those threats never result in actual court filings, but sometimes they do result in settlements outside of courts, and some commentators are suggesting that this is a lot more about intimidation and a lot more about Trump's relationship with legacy media traditional media quote unquote mainstream media than it is about actually winning damages and taking it to court.
What do we think are going to be the next steps here.
Well, so far, nothing has been filed officially in terms of legal action, but the BBC is continuing with that internal review that will take some time, and there might be some revelations about editorial processes that come to light that could give Trump more of a case whether or not this ends up in court. You know, I doubt it's going to be the last time we hear about
Donald Trump having issues with mainstream media. I doubt it's going to be the last time we see a bit of a back and forth about him disagreeing with the way certain news publishers talk about him or the way he's presented in traditional media. Either way, you know, there's plenty to come, I think, Lucy.
Thanks so much for explaining that, Emma, and thank you for joining us today on the Daily Ohs. We'll be back this afternoon with the headlines. Until then, have a great day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung Calkatin woman from Gadighl country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal
and torrest Rate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.