BBC-Trump crisis live: Broadcaster apologises to president over speech edit but rejects $1bn compensation demand

Lisa Nandy said she is confident the BBC is dealing with the threat of legal action from US President Donald Trump with “the seriousness that it demands”.

The Culture Secretary told BBC Breakfast: “The BBC, as you know, is independent of Government and so they are having those direct discussions with the US administration and with their own lawyers, but I have been speaking daily to the chair of the board, the director-general and other senior leadership within the BBC.

“I am confident that they’re gripping this with the seriousness that it demands.”

Ms Nandy added: “They’ve consulted lawyers and they believe that there is no grounds for defamation, not least because the programme was not aired in the United States, because there were other voices on the programme that spoke in support of the president, and because he went on to win that election during which the programme was aired.

“Nevertheless, the senior leadership at the highest levels believed that this was a really serious editorial failing.

“That is the basis on which they have apologised to the president, and apologised to Parliament and the public as well.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has stepped into the escalating row over the BBC’s edited Donald Trump speech, urging prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to press the former US president to abandon what he called a “ludicrous one billion dollar lawsuit” against the broadcaster.

Davey said his party had formally written to No 10, calling on the prime minister to defend the BBC amid mounting political tension around its impartiality.

In a post on X, he claimed that Mr Trump “wants to destroy the BBC” and encouraged people to join his campaign for the corporation to “fairly balance its political news coverage all year round, not just at election time”.

The Lib Dem leader also took aim at Reform UK chief Nigel Farage, who has accused the BBC of being “infected with left-wing bias”.

According to Davey, Farage “is egging him on”, fuelling the backlash surrounding the edit of Trump’s speech that appeared in Newsnight and, earlier, Panorama.

Amid the storm, there are reports that Reform UK has pulled out of a BBC documentary about the party, citing the controversy over the edited Trump clip. The move underscores how the dispute – already prompting high-profile BBC resignations and legal threats from Trump – is spilling further into Britain’s political landscape.

The shadow culture secretary has said that Donald Trump deserves a “fulsome apology” and called for a “fundamental review” of the BBC’s processes.

Nigel Huddleston MP wrote on social media: “I am glad the BBC has said it is sorry and communicated that it made mistakes. The President of the United States deserves a fulsome apology.

“We await to hear whether the US President considers the apology sufficient. I do not want the British licence fee payer or the rest of the BBC to pay the price for poor editorial decisions made by BBC journalists.

“However, we would all be in a better position if the BBC had never made these errors in the first place.

“The BBC needs a fundamental review of processes and procedures to ensure that such failures in impartiality never happen again. Further revelations of historic errors this evening are concerning.”

The corporation said on Thursday evening that chair Samir Shah sent a personal letter to the White House apologise for how a Trump’s speech appeared in a Panorama episode aired last October.

However, the broadcaster has refused to pay the president compensation, adding that it: “strongly disagrees there is a basis for a defamation claim”.

Trump has threatened to sue the BBC over its editing of the speech, which made it appear as if he was explicitly urging people to attack the US Capitol on January 6 2021. His lawyers had written to the corporation earlier this week demanding a retraction and compensation by Friday.

Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, said: “With shocking news of a second Trump edit, it’s clear BBC News is infected by anti-Trump poison.

“We’ve said consistently that a larger clear-out is needed; this is the additional proof required.”

Chairman Samir Shah has sent a personal letter to the White House to apologise for the editing, and lawyers for the corporation have written to the president’s legal team, a BBC spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added: “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.”

The broadcaster said it will not air the Panorama episode Trump: A Second Chance? again, and published a retraction on the show’s webpage on Thursday.

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

The BBC faces renewed scrutiny after it emerged it was accused of misleading viewers about President Donald Trump’s speech ahead of the Capitol riots, two years before the Panorama episode at the centre of the corporation’s current controversy aired.

In BBC Newsnight episode broadcast in June 2022, the show reportedly played a similarly edited speech to the one used in the Panorama episode. Concerns had been raised in an editorial meeting but had been dismissed, according to the Telegraph.

The clips appeared to show the President urging Capitol protesters to “fight like hell”.

The latest controversy involved a BBC Panorama episode called Trump: A Second Chance?, which critics have said was misleading in the way it edited the president’s speech on 6 January 2021.

The US president himself weighed in on the resignations, saying that the documentary, which aired a week before the US presidential election last year, had been an attempt to “step on the scales of a presidential election”.

After days of controversy and a looming $1bn legal threat by the US president, on Thursday the BBC issued an apology to Donald Trump over an edited speech in a Panorama episode.

A BBC spokesperson said: “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.”