They didn't exactly crawl on all fours and kiss the president's feet, but whatever the bureaucratic equivalent of a humiliating mea culpa might be, the BBC was compelled to do so.
Donald Trump's threat to sue the BBC for $1 billion for defamation likely didn't influence their deliberations about what to say to the American president after they altered, twisted, and distorted his Jan. 6, 2021, speech to try to make it appear that Trump was urging his followers to storm the Capitol building.
The BBC said that the deliberately false edit had given "the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action."
"We accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action," the apology said.
The apology, such as it was, was more than the Democrats have ever done after they actually tried to impeach the president for "incitement of insurrection" for the same speech.
"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," they said.
They added: "While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree that there is a basis for a defamation claim."
The BBC's reasoning for why this blatant thumb on the scale isn't defamation? Trump wasn't injured by the smear because he won.
The BBC received the letter from Trump's lawyers on Sunday. It demands a "full and fair retraction" of the documentary, an apology, and that the BBC "appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused."
In its letter to Trump's legal team, the BBC sets out five main arguments for why it does not think it has a case to answer.
First it says the BBC did not have the rights to, and did not, distribute the Panorama episode on its US channels.
When the documentary was available on BBC iPlayer, it was restricted to viewers in the UK.
Secondly, it says the documentary did not cause Trump harm, as he was re-elected shortly after.
Thirdly, it says the clip was not designed to mislead, but just to shorten a long speech, and that the edit was not done with malice. (!!!) (author's emphasis)
If it was done to "shorten a long speech," why pick up the clip where the exact words that would, when taken out of context, indict the president for incitement?
Liar, Liar... you know the rest.
The BBC adds that the clip was never meant to be seen "in isolation" and that U.S. defamation laws protect such "political speech."
There was another biased edit from a different BBC program. A 2022 "Newsnight" segment used a voiceover to accuse Trump of incitement.
Trump is shown as saying: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol. And we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not gonna have a country anymore."
This was followed by a voiceover from presenter Kirsty Wark saying "and fight they did" over footage from the Capitol riots.
Responding to the clip on the same programme, former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who quit a diplomatic post and became a critic of Trump after describing the 6 January riots as an "attempted coup," said the video had "spliced together" Trump's speech.
"That line about 'we fight and fight like hell' is actually later in the speech and yet your video makes it look like those two things came together," he said.
The BBC responded that the corporation holds itself to the "highest editorial standards" and the matter was being looked into.
I'm sure they'll get right on that.
Trump's legal team told the Telegraph it was "now clear that BBC engaged in a pattern of defamation against President Trump."
Gee. Ya think?
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