Pressure is on PM to speak Donald Trump out of his $5billion authorized menace to the BBC as looming invoice ‘will hit taxpayers’
Keir Starmer was under intense pressure last night to persuade Donald Trump not to ‘pick the pocket’ of the British taxpayer by suing the BBC for $5billion.
The Prime Minister was due to hold a crunch phone call with the US President as the fallout intensified over the corporation twice broadcasting doctored footage of his speech before the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
After the BBC apologised but declined to pay compensation, Mr Trump said he would seek damages for up to five times the $1billion he had originally threatened. He is set to launch his defamation lawsuit in Florida this week.
It emerged last night that lawyers for the broadcaster have told the President it has no case to answer, claiming no one in the US could watch the Panorama at the heart of the row and no damage was done to his reputation.
In what was described as a ‘robust’ defence, the BBC is said to have claimed the show was ‘geo-blocked’, which stopped it from being played in America.
And because Mr Trump went on to win the election, Panorama’s October 2024 broadcast could not have caused him ‘overwhelming reputational harm’, The Times reported.
Politicians, television executives and media lawyers yesterday called on Sir Keir and the BBC to stand firm against such ‘playground bully’ tactics.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: ‘We all work hard and pay our licence fee. I don’t think sending some of it over to Mar-a-Lago would be a smart thing to do.’
Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces pressure to talk President Trump out of his threat to launch a lawsuit against the BBC
BBC Director-General Tim Davie resigned on November 9 after the Corporation was acccused of ‘serious and systemic bias’ in its coverage, including doctoring one of President Trump’s speeches given on the day of the January 6 storming of the Capitol Building in 2021
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey added: ‘The idea that the head of a foreign government, of an ally of our country, should be undermining our public institutions, our media, is quite outrageous.
‘I think the millions of TV licence fee payers will be shocked that Donald Trump is coming to pick their pocket.’
The disputed edit contained a splicing of two separate clips that made it falsely appear as if Mr Trump had incited violence from Capitol Hill protesters on January 6, 2021, after he lost the previous year’s election. A very similar edit appeared on Newsnight in 2022.
BBC chairman Samir Shah last week sent a personal letter to the White House to apologise.
Director-General Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness also resigned over the scandal.
On Friday night, Mr Trump said he would seek up to $5billion (£3.8billion) in damages over the misleading editing.
He added: ‘I think I have to do it. They’ve even admitted that they cheated… They changed the words coming out of my mouth.’
But former BBC presenter Nicholas Owen told GB News: ‘I’d be a bit surprised if he goes ahead with the legal thing. He is always a playground bully.’
And media lawyer Mark Stephens told ITV News: ‘Of course he can start a court case, but you’ve then got to have legal merit, and the programme just wasn’t broadcast in America.’
