Trump's week in review: Syrian president visits White House, gov't shutdown ends, BBC apologizes
4. BBC apologizes to Trump over documentary’s edits of his Jan. 6 speech following legal threats
In a statement posted to its corrections and clarifications section Thursday, the British Broadcasting Company apologized for its false depiction of Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, speech to supporters in its documentary “Panorama - Trump: A Second Chance?”
“During that sequence, we showed excerpts taken from different parts of the speech,” the BBC acknowledged. “However, we accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.”
In addition to apologizing to Trump for the “error in judgment,” the BBC vowed that “This program was not scheduled to be re-broadcast and will not be broadcast again in this form on any BBC platforms.”
As highlighted in a BBC article about the apology, one clip from the speech included in the documentary featured Trump telling his supporters gathered at the National Mall to protest the results of the 2020 presidential election: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” while another showed footage from more than 50 minutes later where the president declared, “And we fight. Fight like hell.”
The editing in the documentary showed Trump saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol … and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. Fight like hell.”
As stated in the apology, the editing gave the impression that the comments were made all at the same time as opposed to 50 minutes apart.
The BBC’s apology comes after Trump’s legal team sent a letter to the news outlet Sunday demanding “a full and fair retraction” of the documentary, an apology and financial compensation.
Lawyers for the BBC responded to the letter by reiterating their apology while rejecting the call for financial compensation: “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.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
