The BBC has issued an apology to President Trump for its dishonestly edited report on January 6, but says it won’t be offering him any compensation.
The BBC has apologised to US President Donald Trump for a Panorama episode that spliced parts of his 6 January 2021 speech together, but rejected his demands for compensation.
The corporation said the edit had given “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action” and said it would not show the 2024 programme again.
Lawyers for Trump have threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn (£759m) in damages unless the corporation issues a retraction, apologises and compensates him.
Top leadership at the BBC resigned earlier this week, but neither admitted to doing anything wrong. Deborah Turness, the CEO of News, issued a “mistakes have been made” statement but also denied there was any bias at the BBC. And yet, the Telegraph is reporting today that they identified another instance in which the BBC made essentially the same misleading edit, two years before the one that aired last October.
BBC Newsnight also doctored footage of a Donald Trump speech and ignored concerns that were raised about it, The Telegraph can reveal.
Spliced footage of the speech, which aired in an episode in 2022, made it appear that Mr Trump was encouraging his supporters to riot.
The edit was similar to a version aired in a Panorama documentary that was broadcast last year…
BBC insiders have sought to portray the bias allegations as part of a Right-wing coup against its news operation, suggesting that individual errors were not evidence of a systemic problem.
However, the separately doctored Newsnight footage – disclosed to The Telegraph by a separate whistleblower who had worked on the programme – suggests issues are more ingrained in the corporation than its defenders claim.
Once could be an accident but twice is a pattern. Here’s video of the newly discovered BBC edit from 2022.
The Telegraph revealed that the BBC doctored footage of President Trump’s Capital speech a SECOND time and ignored concerns that were raised about it by a former White House chief of staff.
This sliced edit was used on Newsnight in 2022.
This is activism, not a mere “mistake”. pic.twitter.com/EoYDsgz4c5
— Chris Rose (@ArchRose90) November 13, 2025
Mick Mulvaney, who served as acting White House chief of staff in 2019 and 2020 and then became a Trump critic, appeared on the BBC Newsnight program where this misleading clip was aired. This is a live-to-air program and Mulvaney complained at the time that the video had been spliced together in a way that was misleading. Here’s video of his reaction to the clip from 2022.
BBC have been pushing lies for years, Panorama & now Newsnight. They aired this clip back in 2022 & had Mick Mulvaney as a guest, he called them out saying you’ve spliced clips together live on air.
Trump needs to bring the BBC down so it sends a message out to the other MSM. pic.twitter.com/Wcdf5mjBUP
— JARDINE (@oJARDINEo) November 13, 2025
The person who gave this information to the Telegraph worked at the BBC as a graphic designer on the Newsnight program in 2022, which is how they remember that this clip existed. They said Mulvaney’s comments were raised in an internal meeting the next day with some producer asking about the clip. But the concerns were immediately brushed off and that was the end of it. You can hear the Telegraph’s interview with this former BBC employee here.
Trump’s lawyers gave the BBC until Friday to apologize and offer him some compensation. Now he’s received the apology but won’t be offered any compensation. Does that mean Trump is going to sue tomorrow? I think the answer is possibly yes.
In response to the latest revelations, a spokesman for his legal team said it was “now clear that BBC engaged in a pattern of defamation against President Trump”.
The fact that this happened twice and that the first time it was called out live really does make it harder to believe this was a mistake and not the result of bias. However, there is a hitch:
Mark Stephens, a lawyer at the London-based firm Howard Kennedy, said Trump would faces a “pretty insurmountable” challenge if he tried to sue in the U.K. given the relevant statute of limitation. “He had one year until Oct. 28, 2025, to launch his claim,” he said. “So he’s about two weeks out of time.”
If he’s 2 weeks past the deadline for airing this last year, he’s well past the deadline for the previous instance. So there may be a procedural reason this can’t move forward. I’m not an attorney so I’ll leave the legal wrangling to the experts. But stay tuned because we should know more about what comes next by tomorrow.
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