LONDON, England — The BBC has issued a formal apology to US President Donald Trump for editing a documentary in a way that made it appear he had encouraged violence during his January 2021 speech in Washington, but the corporation has firmly rejected his demand for financial compensation.
The apology was published Thursday, November 13, 2025, evening in the broadcaster’s Corrections and Clarifications section, following scrutiny of the BBC Panorama documentary Trump: A Second Chance?
The programme featured an edited sequence that combined parts of Trump’s speech delivered more than 50 minutes apart, creating the impression that he had directly urged supporters to “fight” before they marched to the US Capitol.
In the documentary, Trump was shown saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
But a leaked internal memo — reported by the Telegraph and written by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee — revealed that the edit had stitched together lines from different points in the original address.
Trump had actually told supporters earlier in the speech: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
The revelation triggered a wave of internal criticism and ultimately led to the resignations of Tim Davie, BBC director general, and Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News.
In a letter sent to the BBC on Sunday, November 9, 2025, Trump’s lawyers demanded a full retraction of the documentary by Friday, November 14, 2025, and threatened a lawsuit seeking “no less” than $1 billion in damages.
They claimed the edited clip caused the president “overwhelming financial and reputational harm”.
The corporation acknowledged the error but dismissed the legal threat.
A BBC spokesperson, responding to Trump’s legal team, said: “BBC chair Samir Shah has separately sent a personal letter to the White House making clear to President Trump that he and the corporation are sorry for the edit of the president’s speech on 6 January 2021, which featured in the programme.”
However, the spokesperson added: “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.”
The broadcaster confirmed it has “no plans to rebroadcast” the documentary on any of its platforms.
The incident has intensified scrutiny of the BBC’s editorial oversight, with critics accusing its board of acting too slowly once concerns surfaced.
The controversy lands amid broader criticism of the corporation’s news output — including claims of “anti-Israel bias” in its Arabic service’s coverage of the Gaza war and disputes over its reporting on transgender issues.
Turness, before her resignation, acknowledged errors were made but insisted that allegations of institutional bias were unfounded, saying “allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong”.
