Let’s just step back and consider what really led up to the threat from Trump to sue the BBC for defamation.
An independent programme maker produced a Panorama hour long special entitled “Trump: a second chance”, which examined why the US electorate were prepared to consider a recently convicted felon becoming their President again. It was made for the UK audience and aired here shortly before the vote in the USA. So far as we know it wasn’t broadcast either before, or after, the election in the USA.
Two separate clips from the speech Trump gave to the crowd at the Ellipse, as they prepared to march to the Capitol at his behest, were spliced together. That 11 second part of the programme, considered on its own, is misleading. Something that was raised by one member of the BBC committee that reviews content but rejected as irrelevant in the overall context by the majority. That person, concerned about other issues too, wrote a long memo to the BBC Board. He got no rely so then sent it to the Daily Telegraph pushing his own opinion out into the open.
The BBC were asked by Ofcom to review the complaints, which they have and made a number of changes. On the Panorama edit they accepted it was an error not to identify that the clips weren’t contemporaneous and apologised, two executives resigning as a consequence.
Trump has jumped on this, no doubt encouraged by his UK friends, and threatened legal action of the type he has used against others. Is this justified?
How many people would have watched just that 11 second segment? I venture, none at all. Most would have watched the whole programme, the rest enough to understand the arguments being made. Nobody saw it in the USA. Anyone extracting just the spliced clips and posting them on the internet to make a political point are themselves responsible. Not the BBC. They could just as easily edit the original speech themselves! Politically motivated extracts which distort a speaker’s meaning are all over the internet.
So how has Trump been defamed? No US voter could have seen the whole programme, which neither defamed him, nor is the subject of a complaint. No UK viewer is likely to have seen just the spliced clips. Something supported by the fact that no one seems to have noticed them, or complained about them, other than Mr Prescott, until he made his observations public. Including all the right wing press and posters here.
That has to be because the role Trump played in the storming of the Capitol is on record. All that 11 second clip did was reference it. It was never intended to be viewed and considered in isolation and wasn’t.
So my conclusion is he has not been defamed in any way. That won’t stop the threats because of the publicity they generate but imagine if he really went to Court. Not only would the claim be shown to be absurd, it would mean all the dirty washing of the Capitol riot being publicly aired again. Lose, lose.
So I think the BBC will stand firm and keep quiet. Trump may try to claim the moral high ground by offering to magnanimously withdraw because of his “special” relationship with the UK whilst warning the BBC to mend their ways and banning them from the White House.,
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