{"id":15680,"date":"2025-11-14T12:02:44","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T23:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=15680"},"modified":"2025-11-14T12:02:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T23:02:44","slug":"bbc-apologises-to-trump-over-documentary-edit-of-us-presidents-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=15680","title":{"rendered":"BBC apologises to Trump over documentary edit of US president\u2019s speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By\u00a0<b>Catherine Nicholls<\/b>,\u00a0<b>Christian Edwards\u00a0<\/b>and\u00a0<b>Billy Stockwell<\/b>, CNN<\/p>\n<p>The BBC has apologised to US President Donald Trump\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/thedetail\/578826\/trump-v-bbc-trust-is-the-real-casualty-in-the-latest-edit-scandal\">over a documentary<\/a>\u00a0that Trump&#8217;s lawyers described as false and defamatory, seeking to defuse a row that has plunged the public broadcaster into its worst crisis in years.<\/p>\n<p>A BBC spokesperson said that lawyers for the broadcaster had written to Trump&#8217;s legal team in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/national\/programmes\/ninetonoon\/audio\/2019012505\/uk-trump-s-bbc-deadline-starmer-s-leadership-under-pressure\">response to a letter received on Sunday<\/a>, according to BBC News.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;BBC chair Samir Shah has separately sent a personal letter to the White House making clear to President (Donald) Trump that he and the corporation are sorry for the edit of the president&#8217;s speech on 6 January 2021, which featured in the program,&#8221; the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p>The spokesperson said the BBC has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary on any BBC platforms while rejecting that it was defamatory.<\/p>\n<p>Rejecting Trump&#8217;s demands for compensation the broadcaster said, &#8220;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&#8221;, according to BBC News.<\/p>\n<p>Trump had threatened to sue the BBC for $USD1 billion (NZD$1.7b) unless it retracted the October 2024 documentary and apologised for what his lawyers have described as &#8220;overwhelming financial and reputational harm&#8221; before a deadline of 5pm ET Friday (Saturday NZT).<\/p>\n<p>The BBC had already apologised for an error of judgement in the documentary, titled\u00a0<i>Trump: A Second Chance?<\/i>, but not before it had ignited a scandal that saw the resignations of its director-general and head of news.<\/p>\n<p>In the documentary, Trump&#8217;s 6 January speech was edited to show him saying: &#8220;We&#8217;re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I&#8217;ll be there with you and we fight. We fight like hell and if you don&#8217;t fight like hell, you&#8217;re not going to have a country anymore.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In fact, the US leader said: &#8220;We&#8217;re gonna walk down to the Capitol and we&#8217;re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,&#8221; with &#8220;fight like hell&#8221; coming 54 minutes later.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with Fox News Tuesday, Trump said the British broadcaster had &#8220;butchered&#8221; his &#8220;beautiful&#8221; and &#8220;calming&#8221; speech and &#8220;made it sound radical&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Trump has a history of sending legal threats and not following through with lawsuits. But he has sued The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal in recent months over other grievances.<\/p>\n<p>The BBC&#8217;s board has been criticised for responding too slowly to the editing screw-up, which was revealed in a leaked internal memo that has created a firestorm of criticism and allegations of systemic bias.<\/p>\n<p>Deborah Turness, the outgoing CEO of BBC News who resigned on Sunday, has said that while mistakes were made, &#8220;allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>In a message to BBC News staff following her resignation, Turness said that the backlash surrounding the Trump documentary had &#8220;reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC &#8211; an institution that I love&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Source: CNN &amp; RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By\u00a0Catherine Nicholls,\u00a0Christian Edwards\u00a0and\u00a0Billy Stockwell, CNN The BBC has apologised to US President Donald Trump\u00a0over a documentary\u00a0that Trump&#8217;s lawyers described as false and defamatory, seeking to defuse a row that has plunged the public broadcaster into its worst crisis in years. A BBC spokesperson said that lawyers for the broadcaster had written to Trump&#8217;s legal team [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15682,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15680\/revisions\/15682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}