Clive Coleman discusses Donald Trump’s $1bn defamation threat against the BBC on Sky News and Times Radio

Our Senior Partner, the former BBC Legal Affairs Correspondent Clive Coleman was interviewed by Sky News and Times Radio regarding US president Donald Trump threatening the BBC with a $1-5 billion defamation claim following the broadcaster using misleading footage in an episode of Panorama.

Clive described the incident as “a big mistake” for which “the BBC has rightly apologised,” adding that Panorama’s editorial and legal processes were designed specifically to prevent such errors:

“It is almost the first lesson you learn as a broadcast journalist: you do not splice two clips from different parts of a speech together without telling the audience you’re doing it. That responsibility lies with the programme’s makers – the reporter, producer and editor – not the BBC’s lawyers, who will naturally assume a clip is continuous if it appears to be so.”

On the likelihood of Trump’s claim succeeding, Clive noted that the legal and jurisdictional hurdles would be significant:

“I think the BBC needs to take it seriously, but it has a very strong case. The Panorama programme was not broadcast in the United States and was only available on iPlayer in the UK. The biggest barrier Donald Trump faces is the US requirement to prove actual malice – that the BBC knew what it was doing was wrong and did it maliciously. That’s a very high bar.”

Clive also observed that any litigation would be as much a reputational as a commercial decision for the BBC:

“Litigation is always a commercial decision and a reputational decision. The BBC would dearly love to draw a line under this and get it off the radar.”

A clip of Clive’s segment on Sky News can be found here, and his interview on Times Radio can be found here.