President Trump targeting the BBC is a major challenge to media freedom
Alice Johnson, IBA Multimedia JournalistMonday 16 February 2026
In November, US President Donald Trump filed a $10bn defamation lawsuit against the BBC over the editing of a speech he made on 6 January 2021, which featured in a Panorama documentary broadcast a week before the US presidential election in 2024. The edit spliced together two parts of a speech Trump made at a rally on 6 January 2021, which the BBC conceded had resulted in ‘the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action’. Trump’s lawyers allege in court documents that the BBC ‘intentionally and maliciously’ edited the speech he gave before the attack on the US capital.
The BBC apologised over the edit for what it has called ‘an error of judgment’ but rejected Trump’s demands for compensation and disagreed that there was any basis for a defamation claim. In mid-January, the BBC announced that it would file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Gill Phillips, the former Director of Editorial Legal Services at The Guardian, says that while it is fair that the editorial error is criticised, Trump’s defamation lawsuit appears to be an abusive legal action designed to intimidate and silence the media. ‘I have to say that this lawsuit by Donald Trump does seem to be a classic SLAPP [strategic lawsuit against public participation] suit to me,’ she says. ‘Ethically when making edits, you have to be very careful not to mislead…but as I understand it this was 10 seconds in an hour-long documentary that aimed to be balanced about the issues’.
Mark Stephens CBE is a UK defamation lawyer and Co-Chair of the IBA’s Human Rights Institute. He believes Trump’s lawsuit against the BBC is very unlikely to succeed. ‘A libel lawsuit requires proof of serious harm, actual malice, and the Panorama [documentary] wasn't aired in the US,’ he says. ‘And I think most reasonable people will think that Donald Trump's reputation was already shaped by judicial findings and global coverage of January the 6th’.
Quite clearly, the Trump lawsuit is designed to intimidate the BBC and to send a message to the wider media that he's got them in his sights
Nick Pollard
Former Head of Sky News and ex-Chairman of the OFCOM Content Board
Trump’s decision to sue followed the leak of an internal BBC report that raised concerns about the edit of the speech and political impartiality at the corporation. This led to the resignation of both the BBC’s Director General, Tim Davie and its CEO of News, Deborah Turness. The crisis has sparked public debate about allegations of political bias at the BBC and the governance structures and oversight needed to ensure its impartiality and editorial independence.
The leaked report that highlighted the Panorama edit and provoked the lawsuit from Trump also included concerns about other areas of BBC reporting where its author, Michael Prescott, a former independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board, perceived systemic bias. His claims have prompted debate about the future of the BBC and the state of its news coverage, including accusations of institutional bias and political interference. Critics of the report, meanwhile, have questioned Prescott’s links to a particular BBC editorial board member involved in its amplification, leading to allegations of undue political influence at the BBC, which Prescott denies. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has said the perception of political influence at the BBC ‘is a problem’, adding that political appointments to the editorial board would be examined as part of the review for the next BBC royal charter.
‘I think it's a messy situation to have almost a third of the BBC board appointed by the government,’ says Alan Rusbridger, former Editor of The Guardian, ‘because you're trying to say on the one hand, this is an independent organisation and yet, on the other hand, the third of the board of governors are appointed by the Government of the day.’
Nick Pollard is the former Head of Sky News and ex-Chairman of the OFCOM Content Board. ‘For me, quite clearly, the Trump lawsuit is designed to intimidate the BBC and to send a message to the wider media that he's got them in his sights,’ he says.
Following legal threats from Trump over the Panorama edit, the BBC, in a controversial move, decided to remove criticism of Trump by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman in one of its prestigious Reith Lectures. The BBC said it made the decision after receiving legal advice. ‘To highlight one line in one lecture and say, oh, no, we can't say that because we're frightened that that will make Trump even crosser does speak to the chilling effect of this kind of legal action,’ says Rusbridger.
He points out that, in the US, the Sullivan Doctrine exists to protect journalists from the chilling effect of defamation lawsuits by public officials. ‘They have afforded American media tremendous leeway in writing, broadcasting about public figures, including the right to make mistakes,’ Rusbridger says. ‘That’s why it is so important for the BBC to fight this case because the Sullivan Doctrine is there to protect journalists’.
Apart from targeting the BBC, Trump has filed similar lawsuits against American broadcasters over their news coverage, which in some cases have led to multimillion dollar settlements. Last year, the White House banned the Associated Press from accessing press events because of its refusal to rename a body of water the Gulf of America. Pollard says these actions demonstrate a coordinated attack by the Trump administration against public interest journalism. ‘I don't think there's any argument that the White House likes to attack media, intimidate them if they can, bully them into coughing up money, to be handed over to who knows where,’ he says.
Header image: Trump White House Archived/Flickr