The battle for press freedom: The BBC stands firm against Trump.
The battle for press freedom: The BBC stands firm against Trump . The president insists on demanding between $1 billion and $5 billion from the British broadcasting corporation over a documentary that never aired in the USEverything related to Donald Trump is subject to exaggeration, whether it be praise or attacks. Many BBC supporters have this week called for the British public broadcaster to respond to the U.S. president in the same vein as the famous letter that the satirical magazine Private Eye sent in 1971 in response to threats of a defamation lawsuit by a businessman named James Arkell: “The nature of our reply is as follows: fuck off.” Since then, it has become common to joke, “I refer you to the case of Arkell v. Pressdram [Pressdram was the name of the magazine’s owner],” to defuse any frivolous legal threat against a media outlet.
The president insists on demanding between $1 billion and $5 billion from the British broadcasting corporation over a documentary that never aired in the US
BBC headquarters in London.Guillermo Garrido (EFE)
Everything related to Donald Trump is subject to exaggeration, whether it be praise or attacks. Many BBC supporters have this week called for the British public broadcaster to respond to the U.S. president in the same vein as the famous letter that the satirical magazine Private Eye sent in 1971 in response to threats of a defamation lawsuit by a businessman named James Arkell: “The nature of our reply is as follows: fuck off.” Since then, it has become common to joke, “I refer you to the case of Arkell v. Pressdram [Pressdram was the name of the magazine’s owner],” to defuse any frivolous legal threat against a media outlet.
The public broadcaster, however, has decided to take a more diplomatic approach to try to mitigate one of the biggest credibility crises it has ever faced. The BBC has apologized to Trump and removed the controversial documentary, which aired on the program Panorama, from its digital platform. Firstly, because the error did occur and had to be corrected. The misleading splicing of two audio clips from the U.S. president’s January 6, 2021 speech, which appeared to suggest a direct order to his supporters to storm the Capitol, ultimately led to the resignation of the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, and the head of the news division, Deborah Turness.
But the network’s legal team insists that what happened was an “error in judgment,” and not manipulation stemming from the “ideological bias” that the BBC’s enemies, both internal and external, have attributed to it for decades. For this reason, they have refused to accept Trump’s demand for financial compensation for the “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” that the documentary may have caused.
“The BBC should shame their American broadcasters for their spineless capitulation by refusing to be bullied into abject apologies or donations to Trump’s presidential library. The corporation made an error. It has (belatedly) corrected it. It has expressed regret. Now move on,” argued Alan Rusbridger, the legendary editor of The Guardian, now at the helm of Prospect magazine.
Trump, who has turned politics into a negotiation game and a power struggle, has used the same tactic — threatening multimillion-dollar lawsuits — against all media outlets, law firms and academic institutions that annoy or criticize him. Some, like ABC and CBS, have agreed to pay enormous sums in out-of-court settlements to relieve the pressure.- ELPaisa
