Alison McGovern speaks to media about BBC crisis as culture secretary due to address MPs in attempt to contain fallout
Good morning. Yesterday the BBC in crisis story, that had primarily been about the resignations of its director general and its head of news, veered into international diplomacy when Donald Trump threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn over the way it edited a clip of the speech he gave before his supporters attacked the US Capitol and people working there on 6 January 2021.
This is obviously awkward for the government, not least because the BBC is funded with taxpayers’ money and so any payout to the president would ultimately come from them.
This morning there is quite a lot of legal comment around addressing the question of whether or not Trump has much of a legal case. I’ll summarise some of it later, but, bluntly, the answer is no. But a lot of this analysis falls under the heading of category error; Trump has launched several high-profile cases against US media organisations with little or no legal merit, and almost always they have settled, not because they thought Trump had a case, but because being in ongoing dispute with the White House created other risks and it was safer and easier to cave.
