BBC Director General Tim Davie has told staff that the corporation must “fight for our journalism” after Donald Trump threatened a $1 billion lawsuit over a Panorama program.
The statement follows the publication of a leaked internal BBC memo by the Telegraph last Monday, alleging that the documentary misled viewers by splicing together excerpts from the former US president’s January 6, 2021 speech, creating the impression that he explicitly incited the Capitol Hill riot.
“We have made some mistakes that have cost us, but we need to fight,” said Davie, who resigned on Sunday alongside BBC News CEO Deborah Turness amid increasing pressure over the memo. He made the remarks on Tuesday.
“This narrative will not just be given by our enemies, it’s our narrative,” he added.
He stated that the BBC has endured “difficult times… but it just does good work, and that speaks louder than any newspaper, any weaponisation.”
Trump threatened legal action unless the BBC issued a “full and fair retraction” of the program by Friday. The BBC has indicated that it will respond in due course.
BBC Chair Samir Shah, in a letter to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee (CMS) on Monday, stated that the corporation would like to apologize for the edit, which he described as an “error of judgement” that gave the impression of a “direct call for violent action.”
During Tuesday’s staff call, in which Shah also participated, neither Davie nor the BBC chair mentioned Trump’s threatened legal action.
Davie cited the “editorial breach, and I think some responsibility had to be taken” as one of the reasons for his resignation.
He also pointed to the upcoming charter renewal, stating his desire to provide his successor with a “runway into that,” as well as the personal pressures of the “relentless” role.
Shah also defended the corporation’s seven-day delay in responding to the memo’s publication.
“We had a deadline, that was Monday… and we met that,” he said, referring to the deadline set by the CMS, and emphasized that he “needed to be careful and get it right.”
No timeline was provided for selecting Davie’s replacement, but the chair stated that the corporation was in “succession mode.”
BBC Culture Editor Katie Razzall reported “some disquiet” among BBC staff regarding the Q&A session, which was moderated by a member of the BBC’s communications team, rather than a journalist.
Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy defended the BBC from “sustained attacks” by politicians who she said were going beyond criticizing its editorial failures.
She acknowledged that the “concerns are serious” but distinguished between “raising serious concerns about editorial failings and members of this house launching a sustained attack on the institution itself.”
She added that the BBC was “essential to this country” and was “not just a broadcaster, it’s a national institution,” calling it “a light on the hill here and around the world.”
Nandy confirmed that the once-a-decade process of reviewing the corporation’s charter would begin shortly and would ensure a BBC that is “fiercely independent” and “genuinely accountable” to the public.
At its meeting on Tuesday, the CMS committee agreed to hold an evidence session with members of the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee in the coming weeks, including Shah and BBC board members Robbie Gibb and Caroline Thomson.
Shadow Culture Secretary Nigel Huddleston stated that the BBC “needs saving from itself” and that while “we all want the BBC to succeed,” there needed to be “institutional change…not just a few people at the top.”
Downing Street has declined to comment on Trump’s legal threat, stating that this was a “matter for the BBC.”
“It is clearly not for the government to comment on any ongoing legal matters,” the prime minister’s official spokesperson said.
“Our position is clear, the BBC is independent and it’s for the cooperation to respond to questions about their editorial decisions.”
Asked whether there were concerns the issue would impact Keir Starmer’s relationship with Trump, the spokesperson said the two had a “very strong” relationship.
The spokesperson would not be drawn on whether the BBC should apologize directly to the president.
Trump’s legal team wrote to the BBC on Sunday threatening action over the “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements” in the Panorama program.
The BBC said the program, which was first broadcast on 24 October 2024, was not available to watch on iPlayer because it was “over a year old.”
In his speech on 6 January 2021, Trump said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
In the Panorama program, he was shown saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell”.
The “And we fight. We fight like hell” comment was taken from a different part of the speech where Trump discussed how “corrupt” US elections were.
Sections of the speech that were stitched together were originally more than 50 minutes apart.
Media lawyer Mark Stephens said it would be difficult for Trump to bring the case in the US, since his team would need to prove the program had been shown there.
“Panorama wasn’t broadcast in the USA, and BBC iPlayer isn’t available… so it’s not clear that any US court would have jurisdiction to hear the claim,” he told BBC Breakfast.
George Freeman, a former assistant general counsel for The New York Times, described numbers cited in legal complaints in the US – such as the $1bn in Trump’s – as “totally meaningless” and “empty”.
“It’s so meaningless that when I was at the New York Times, we had a policy that the paper wouldn’t print the amount sued for,” he told the BBC’s World Tonight program.
He explained that in the US, Trump’s team would need to prove a “gross distortion” of his meaning, that the edit harmed his reputation, and that it “was done intentionally to create a different meaning”.
The resignations at the BBC followed mounting pressure over the leaked memo, written by a former independent external adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial standards committee, Michael Prescott.
Beyond Panorama, the memo also raised concerns about issues including reporting by BBC Arabic on the Israel-Gaza war and coverage of trans issues. Shah said on Monday it was “simply not true” that the BBC had buried them or failed to act.
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