3 hours ago
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The BBC has asked a US court to throw out Donald Trump’s $10bn (£7.5bn) lawsuit over the way a documentary edited one of his speeches, warning that proceeding with the case would have a “chilling effect” on its reporting on the president.
In papers filed to the Florida court dealing with the case, the BBC’s US lawyers claimed Trump’s reputation had not been damaged by the documentary, given it aired in the UK a week before his re-election.
The broadcaster’s lawyers also reiterated that the Panorama documentary, Trump: a Second Chance, was simply not published in the US, including Florida, meaning the court had no jurisdiction to hear the case.
They also cited other cases to argue that defendants should not have to deal with “expensive yet groundless litigation”, which restricted the ability to cover public figures.
“All the more so when [the] plaintiff is among the most powerful and high-profile individuals in the world, on whose activities the BBC reports every day,” the BBC’s case states.
“The chilling effect is clear. Federal courts in Florida therefore frequently dismiss defective defamation claims like this one at the pleading stage.”
The corporation’s lawyers cited a recent Trump lawsuit against CNN, which was dismissed as “meritless”. The 2022 suit objected to the network’s use of the phrase “the big lie”, which it used to refer to the president’s claim that the 2020 election was “stolen”.
The BBC has already apologised personally to Trump for a 12-second clip in the 2024 documentary, which spliced together two parts of the speech made on 6 January 2021. The clip suggested that Trump told the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”
The words were taken from sections of his speech almost an hour apart. When the edit emerged at the end of last year, the BBC issued a retraction for “unintentionally” giving “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”.
However, the BBC said the documentary was not shown in the US or Florida.
Its case states: “More than a year later, even after being re-elected with the support of a sizeable majority of Florida voters, the president alleged that the documentary defamed him in Florida – where defendants never aired it.”
It said that despite the claims of Trump’s lawyers, the BBC never made the documentary available in the US on BritBox International, a paid-for streaming service owned by BBC Studios, or on BBC.com, the broadcaster’s international website.
It said that while third-party distributors did acquire the rights to show the documentary overseas, none aired it in the US. It said a shorter international version of the documentary did not even contain the edit of the 6 January speech.
“The court should dismiss this lawsuit with prejudice at the outset,” the BBC’s case states.
A BBC spokesperson said: “We have said throughout we will robustly defend the case against us. Put simply, the documentary was never aired in Florida – or the US.
“It wasn’t available to watch in the US on iPlayer, online or any other streaming platforms including BritBox and BBC Select. We have therefore challenged jurisdiction of the Florida court and filed a motion to dismiss the president’s claim.”
