Clive Coleman comments in Politico on Trump threatening a $1bn lawsuit against the BBC

Following recent news that the BBC used misleading footage in an episode of Panorama that aired shortly before the 2024 US presidential election, US President Donald Trump has threatened the public broadcaster with a defamation claim worth up to $1 billion.

Commenting in Politico, our Senior Partner and former BBC Legal Affairs Correspondent Clive Coleman said:

“I really struggle to understand how we got to this place. The first lesson almost you’re taught as a broadcast journalist is that you do not join two bits of footage together from different times in a way that will make the audience think that it is one piece of footage.”

“Litigation is always a commercial decision and it’s a reputational decision,” he continued. Clive highlighted that if such a claim were to be filed, settlement talks would likely be preferable, as a long drawn-out court case could “hang over the heads of the BBC for many, many years, like a dark cloud.”

Read Clive’s comments in Politico, here.