Trump Threat to Sue BBC Over Speech Edit Faces High Hurdles

Sir Howard Stringer, Former Non-Executive Director on BBC's Board of Directors and Former Chairman of Sony, discusses President Trump's brewing legal battle with the BBC.

President Donald Trump, unswayed by the BBC’s apology and resignations of its top officials, is persisting with his threat to sue the network for as much as $5 billion despite significant legal barriers to prove he was deliberately defamed.

“I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Friday, continuing his quest to punish the British television network over an edit of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech that made it seem he was directly calling for violence at the US Capitol.

The effort faces a host of legal questions.

First, it’s not clear that US courts even have jurisdiction, given that the documentary never aired in the US and was geo-blocked in the US on the BBC’s streaming service.

The president would also need to prove that the BBC had acted with “actual malice” toward him when it edited the documentary — a high bar required for public figures that was established by the US Supreme Court in 1964 in order to protect free speech.

“They’ve got to meet the actual malice standard with New York Times versus Sullivan, which is a very tough standard,” said Gregory Germain, a professor at Syracuse University College of Law. Trump is “the ultimate public figure.”

Trump’s lawyer said in a Nov. 9 letter to the British Broadcasting Corp. that it had until Friday evening to issue an apology, retract the Panorama documentary at the center of the dispute and offer financial compensation for “harm caused” — or face a $1 billion defamation lawsuit.

“The damages he asked for were completely unrealistic and he would be very unlikely to recover anywhere near that,” said Lyrissa Lidsky, a professor at University of Florida Levin College of Law. “He’s claiming reputational harm but he won the presidency afterwards.”

The BBC met some of Trump’s demands on Thursday when it issued a formal apology and retracted the broadcast, titled “Trump: A Second Chance,” which aired a week before the 2024 presidential election. That followed the surprise resignations of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness days earlier. But no compensation was offered.

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