US President Donald Trump has threatened the BBC with a $1bn lawsuit over the editing of a 2021 speech he gave shortly before protesters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump’s threat on Monday evening is the latest turn in a saga which has embroiled the corporation for the past week, following the leak of a memo which criticised the BBC’s impartiality in a number of areas of its coverage.
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In particular, the memo, which was written by a former BBC journalist and independent consultant to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board, Michal Prescott, singled out the misleading editing of Trump’s speech, which was featured in a Panorama documentary aired shortly before the US election last year.
The leaked memo has prompted outrage, mostly from right-wing media organisations and politicians, and prompted the resignations of Director-General Tim Davie and news CEO Deborah Turness on Sunday.
As a public broadcaster that is funded by a mandatory licence fee for all households in possession of a television, the BBC faces intense scrutiny from all sides of the political divide, with some claiming it is too conservative in its coverage, and others saying it is too left-leaning.
The organisation has also weathered several scandals in recent years over the behaviour of some of its presenters, as well as complaints from its journalists over its coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza.
This year, it was forced to drop former professional footballer and sports commentator Gary Lineker over a pro-Palestine Instagram post that was widely seen as anti-Semitic.
Some media insiders say this is all part of a push by right-wing figures in the BBC to reassert control over the BBC’s editorial content. Speaking to Radio 4’s flagship Today news programme on Monday, David Yelland, former editor of the Sun newspaper, said Davie and Turness were the victims of a “coup”.
The Guardian newspaper cited a “BBC insider” who said that board member Robbie Gibb, who is a personal friend of Prescott, had “led the charge”.
Gibb also served as director of communications for Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May and was an editorial adviser at the right-leaning GB News, before being appointed by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson to the BBC board in 2021. Gibb also sits on the Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC) along with BBC chair and committee head Samir Shah, Tim Davie and independent director Caroline Thomson.
The BBC, responding to queries from the Guardian, said Gibb was only one of the four board members who approved Prescott as a consultant to EGSC. Prescott, in his memo, said he had no political affiliations.
This is a timeline of events leading up to the Trump Panorama documentary scandal this week.
Some of the dates highlighted here are taken from a letter sent by chair Samir Shah to parliament on Monday, and from the memo sent by Michael Prescott to BBC board members.
October 28, 2024: BBC Panorama programme airs
An hour-long BBC Panorama documentary titled, Trump: A Second Chance? was broadcast one week before the US presidential elections.
In it, two separate parts of a speech made by Trump before the Capitol Hill riots in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, were spliced together by editors.
This editing gave the impression that Trump had actively encouraged the riots, which turned violent. The edited clip showed Trump saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
However, transcripts from Trump’s speech show that he first said, “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’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.”
Then, nearly an entire hour later, he said, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He was not directly referencing the march on the Capitol in the second part, and the Panorama documentary did not include a part where Trump said he wanted supporters to “peacefully” make their voices heard.
January 16, 2025: Panorama documentary discussed by EGSC
Concerns about the editing of the Trump speech were raised at a meeting of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board (EGSB). However, this was raised as part of general reflections on coverage of the elections, according to Samir Shah.
Prescott raised concerns, Shah said, but the committee also heard from the news department, which said it was edited to “better convey the message of the speech”. Feedback was sent to the Panorama team, but no formal action was taken, Shah said.
Prescott later wrote in his memo that EGSC consultant David Grossman also delivered a report during the meeting showing the BBC had been biased in its coverage of Trump, and appeared to favour Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris.
February 2025: BBC forced to remove Gaza documentary
In February, the UK’s media regulator, Ofcom, said a BBC documentary about Palestinian children living through Israel’s war on Gaza had broken rules on impartiality as it was narrated by the 13-year-old son of a deputy agriculture minister in the Hamas-run government.
Five days after it was broadcast, the BBC removed the documentary, Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone, from its online streaming platform.
May 12, 2025: Panorama documentary discussed again by EGSC
According to Prescott’s memo, a senior member of the news team again defended the Panorama editing, saying, “There was no attempt to mislead the audience about the content or nature of Mr Trump’s speech before the riot at the Capitol. It’s normal practice to edit speeches into short form clips.”
Prescott added that Turness also justified the editing at this meeting.
May 13, 2025: Prescott emails concerns to BBC chair Samir Shah
In his memo, Prescott said he emailed Samir Shah the following day to explain his concerns, saying, “This is a very, very dangerous precedent. I hope you agree and take some form of action to ensure this potentially huge problem is nipped in the bud.”
Prescott said he received no reply.
June 2025: Review of the EGSC’s processes begins
This was undertaken by Chris Saul, a legal consultant who has been tasked with previous reviews of the transparency of BBC processes since 2019. The specific issues he was asked to report on for this review, and the outcomes, are unclear.
June 2025: Prescott leaves the BBC
At some point after this, Prescott sent his detailed memo to all board members along with a cover letter stating his “despair” at being ignored by senior news leaders.
The memo accused the BBC of “misleading” edits, and claimed the BBC Arabic service had shown anti-Israel bias by over-emphasising stories critical of Israel. Prescott’s memo said BBC coverage was “misrepresenting” the number of women and children killed in Gaza, and also wrongly presented coverage on starvation in the besieged enclave.
At one point, Prescott appeared to take a swipe at Al Jazeera: When a senior news member defended BBC Arabic in meetings, saying it was almost as trusted as Al Jazeera, Prescott questioned if Al Jazeera “is the gold standard” the BBC should aspire to.
The memo further criticised what he called the BBC’s “one-sided” trans rights coverage, claiming stories highlighting women’s rights organisations and others who were critical of the trans rights movement had been suppressed.
July 2025: BBC journalists complain about Gaza coverage
In July, an internal BBC investigation found that the documentary, Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone, which was removed from its website in February, had breached its editorial guidelines on accuracy.
More than 100 journalists working for the BBC wrote a letter protesting this and claimed they were being forced to “do Israel’s PR”.
“We believe the refusal to broadcast the documentary ‘Gaza: Medics Under Fire’ is just one in a long line of agenda driven decisions,” the journalists wrote. “It demonstrates, once again, that the BBC is not reporting ‘without fear or favour’ when it comes to Israel.”
October 17, 2025: Prescott’s memo is reviewed at a full board meeting
Shah said he met Prescott afterwards to discuss “next steps”.
November 3, 2025: Prescott’s memo is leaked to the Daily Telegraph
This was the first time the contents of the memo entered the public domain. The right-wing broadsheet newspaper accused the BBC of doctoring the Trump speech and reported that Prescott had revealed “systemic problems” which BBC management had failed to address.
November 4, 2025: Parliamentary committee writes to BBC chair
Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee, led by Conservative chair Caroline Dinenage, wrote to Samir Shah requesting access to Prescott’s full report, and demanding to know what actions had been taken by the BBC in response to the memo when it was first sent.
Dinenage also requested an update about the EGSC review, which began in June. “The BBC clearly has serious questions to answer regarding both its editorial standards and the way in which concerns are handled by senior management,” Dinenage wrote in the letter.
She added that members of parliament “need to be reassured that those at the very top of the BBC are treating these issues with the seriousness they deserve”.
November 4, 2025: BBC pushes back
In a statement, a BBC spokesperson said, “While we don’t comment on leaked documents, when the BBC receives feedback, it takes it seriously and considers it carefully.”
November 4, 2025: Memo discussed at heated BBC board meeting
According to reporting by the Guardian newspaper, Gibb was present at this meeting and was one of the board members who pressed CEO Turness over Prescott’s claims. Gibb had also pressed Turness on the memo in an earlier board meeting, The Guardian reported.
November 5, 2025: Prescott to give evidence to Parliament
The parliamentary website announced that Michael Prescott would give evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Wednesday, November 12 at 10am, as the UK government prepared to launch a review of the BBC generally in advance renewal of its Royal Charter, which sets the terms for its operations, and which is due in 2027. In a later update, the session was postponed to an as-yet-undisclosed date.
November 7, 2025: The White House comments
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticised the BBC in an interview with The Daily Telegraph following the leak. Leavitt said watching the BBC on her trips to the UK “ruins” her day and that the BBC is “100 percent fake news” and a “propaganda machine”.
November 7, 2025: Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson steps in
In a column in the right-wing Daily Mail newspaper, Johnson accused Director-General Tim Davie of failing to provide any explanations about the issue of impartiality at the BBC following the leak.
“No one has even come close to resigning,” he wrote.
Johnson accused the BBC of being a “sort of mouthpiece for Hamas”, and added that until Davie responded to the memo, “I am simply going to stop paying my licence fee and suggest you do the same.”
November 9, 2025: Davie and Turness resign
Director-General Tim Davie said “ultimate responsibility” lay with him, and that he had decided to resign after “reflecting on the very intense personal and professional demands of managing this role over many years in these febrile times”.
Chief executive of BBC News, Deborah Turness said the “buck stops with me”. She added that “while mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong”.
November 9, 2025: US President Donald Trump weighs in
Trump reacted triumphantly to the news of the resignations on his Truth Social network.
He wrote: “The TOP people in the BBC, including TIM DAVIE, the BOSS, are all quitting/FIRED, because they were caught ‘doctoring’ my very good (PERFECT!) speech of January 6th. Thank you to The Telegraph for exposing these Corrupt “Journalists.” These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election. On top of everything else, they are from a Foreign Country, one that many consider our Number One Ally. What a terrible thing for Democracy!”
November 10, 2025: Samir Shah denies institutional bias
The BBC chair and head of the EGSC, Shah responded to Parliament’s letter of November 4.
Shah said many of the issues Prescott raised were already under review.
He pushed back against claims by Prescott that management had not acted on the points raised regarding the Trump documentary.
Shah wrote, “There was concern expressed by members of the Committee as well as Mr Prescott of the way programme was edited. However, the EGSC also heard from BBC News that the purpose of editing the clip was to convey the message of the speech made by President Trump so that Panorama’s audience could better understand how it had been received by President Trump’s supporters and what was happening on the ground at that time.”
He said he met with Prescott after an October 17 board meeting to discuss the issues and next steps.
Shah apologised for the BBC’s “error of judgement” over the editing of Trump’s speech, but said there was no institutional bias at the BBC.
He also laid out steps being taken to review the issues Prescott had raised and to overhaul the EGSC more generally.
November 10, 2025: Trump threatens $1bn law suit
US President Donald Trump threatened a $1bn lawsuit via a letter to the BBC from his counsel, Alejandro Brito, alleging “malicious, disparaging” edits.
The letter demanded a retraction of the documentary, an apology, and payments to “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused”.
The broadcaster has been given until Friday 22:00 GMT to respond or, Trump’s lawyer said, he will be: “left with no alternative but to enforce his legal and equitable rights, all of which are expressly reserved and are not waived, including by filing legal action for no less than $1,000,000,000 in damages. The BBC is on notice. PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY”.
November 11, 2025: BBC bosses address staff
Outgoing Director-General Davie and BBC chair Samir Shah spoke to staff for 40 minutes. Davie admitted a “mistake” in the Panorama documentary and said that pressure following criticism of the film had contributed to his decision to resign. However, he also sounded a defiant note, and told staff, “I think we’ve got to fight for our journalism.”
