The BBC has confirmed it has received a letter from the US president threatening a legal case and “will respond in due course.”
The confirmation came following the resignation of BBC director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness last night, following complaints about a Panorama documentary which had edited comments by Trump encouraging his supporters to protest at the US Capitol following his 2020 election defeat by Joe Biden.
Trump has already sued several US media outlets so far in his second term, with some cases, including a $15bn defamation suit against the New York Times, thrown out of court already, and suggested that media outlets, including ABC, CNN and CBS, that broadcast content that is not to his liking should have their licences removed.
The news of reality TV star Trump’s latest legal threat came as both the BBC’s outgoing head of news Turness and chair Samia Shah insisted that the BBC is not institutionally biased.
READ MORE: Former Sun editor – Tim Davie ousted by “internal coup” at BBC
Turness told the press outside the BBC’s London headquarters today: “Our journalists aren’t corrupt and I will stand by their journalism.
“It has been the privilege of my career to serve as the CEO of BBC News and to work with our brilliant team of journalists. I stepped down over the weekend because the buck stops with me. But I’d like to make one thing very clear, BBC News is not institutionally biased. That’s why it’s the world’s most trusted news provider.”
Addressing claims of anti-Israel bias in the corporation’s coverage of Gaza, Shah added: “I don’t think there’s a systemic bias in [the BBC being] anti-Israel. I mean, there are loads of arguments that suggest almost the opposite.
“I think that we have issues, as we have talked about underlying problems, and we’ve made changes in needed to try and deal with that. But I think it’s worth talking about the scale of the BBC… and how much excellent, impartial journalism it does. It’s difficult. It is a massive organisation.”
He further noted that the BBC has put out hundreds and hundreds of hours of coverage of Israel and the Middle East, and conceded that “we should own up to mistakes when we have them,” but also added: “Let’s have a sense of perspective and proportionality.”
Responding to the news of the double resignation on his personal social media platform Truth Social overnight, Apprentice US host Trump said: “The TOP people in the BBC, including TIM DAVIE, the BOSS, are all quitting/FIRED, because they were caught “doctoring” my very good (PERFECT!) speech of January 6th.
“Thank you to The Telegraph for exposing these Corrupt ‘Journalists.’ These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election. On top of everything else, they are from a Foreign Country, one that many consider our Number One Ally. What a terrible thing for Democracy!”
It was the Telegraph that leaked an internal BBC memo last week, in which it was revealed that a BBC Panorama report, aired just before the US election last year, that saw Trump returned for a second term, had spliced together two parts of a long Trump speech which he made on 6 January 2021.
