President Donald Trump gave the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) three days to retract, apologise and compensate him for reputational damages or face a billion-dollar lawsuit.

This comes after the British broadcaster apologised to the President for airing a Panorama documentary in October 2024 that included an edited version of Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech. The edit showed Trump appeared to say he would walk with supporters to the Capitol and “fight like hell,” which critics argued implied he was inciting violence.

Today, Friday, November 14, the British broadcaster has apologised but has, however, declined to compensate the president.

In a statement to President Trump, the broadcaster stated that “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 broadcaster emphasised that while they were sorry for the error, they rejected Trump’s demand for compensation, stating his defamation claim “lacks merit.”

"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 statement said.

Lawyers for the BBC have written to President Trump's legal team in response to a letter received on Sunday, a BBC spokesperson said.

"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."

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, during an appearance on BBC Breakfast, expressed that she was confident the corporation was "gripping this with the seriousness that it demands", adding her role was to ensure "the highest standards are upheld".

But she also told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the BBC's editorial standards and guidelines were "in some cases not robust enough and in other cases not consistently applied", adding that there would need to be people "at a very senior level with a journalistic background".

Political appointments to the corporation's board would be examined in the BBC's charter review, she said in response to a question asking if member Sir Robbie Gibb, a former political adviser to Theresa May, had overstepped his remit and weighed into politics.

While this was a matter for the board and its chairman, she said, those appointments "damaged confidence and trust in the BBC's impartiality".

Liberal Democrats leader Sir Ed Davey had urged the prime minister on Thursday to "get on the phone to Trump" to put a stop to his lawsuit threat and "defend the impartiality and independence of the BBC".

Director-General Tim Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness stepped down on Sunday following the escalating backlash.

Trump, on the other hand, happily welcomed the BBC leader's resignation, labelling them as “corrupt” and “dishonest”. His press secretary also referred to the broadcaster as “100 per cent fake news.”

This is not the first time Trump has filed a lawsuit against media houses. In 2024, he sued ABC, CBS, and in September, he sued The New York Times, according to APP.

In 2024, he sued ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos for defamation. The anchor alleged that the President had been found liable for rape, a claim the President blatantly denied, labelling them as lies and highly defamatory. By December 2024, they settled the caseafter which ABC agreed to pay $15 million to a Trump-related foundation, cover $1 million in legal fees, and formally apologise.

Before the lawsuit against ABC News, Trump, in November that same year, sued CBS News over a 60 Minutes interview with then–Vice President Kamala Harris. He claimed the network deceptively edited the interview in a way that misrepresented Harris’s remarks. The case concluded in July 2025 when CBS’s parent company, Paramount, settled for $16 million. As part of the settlement, CBS agreed to release full transcripts of presidential candidate interviews in the future to ensure transparency.

Most recently, on September 16, 2025, Trump filed a massive $15 billion defamation and libel lawsuit against The New York Times. He accused the paper of publishing malicious and fabricated claims in articles and a book released before the 2024 election. While a federal judge struck parts of the complaint in September 2025, Trump refiled an amended version in October 2025. The case remains ongoing.

However, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesman emphasised the BBC’s importance in combating disinformation:

"It's important that the BBC acts swiftly to maintain trust and correct mistakes quickly when they occur."

The government is preparing a review of the BBC’s charter, which governs the corporation’s governance and funding, set to expire in 2027.

The BBC, facing budget cuts and hundreds of job losses, is funded by a licence fee paid by anyone who watches live TV in Britain.

The BBC’s latest crisis intensified after the right-wing Daily Telegraph reported that warnings from a former external standards adviser about serious failings of impartiality and systemic bias had been ignored.

Earlier this year, the BBC also apologised for “serious flaws” in a documentary about the Gaza war, deemed “materially misleading” by the UK media watchdog.

Additionally, the broadcaster faced criticism for failing to remove a livestream of punk-rap duo Bob Vylan at Glastonbury, after anti-Israel comments were made by the frontman.