Trump files $5B defamation lawsuit against BBC over Panorama speech edit

Posted by ndsipa_pomu 11 hours ago

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Comment by mellosouls 11 hours ago

A (flagged) discussion on the topic from a month ago:

BBC director general and News CEO resign in bias controversy 117 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45873738

Comment by ndsipa_pomu 11 hours ago

What worries me about this as a UK citizen is not that Trump has any chance of winning this, but that political pressure is likely to be applied and Starmer strikes me as the type to fold.

I don't think the lawsuit has merit as the programme wasn't broadcast in the U.S. and even so, there has been previously been a lot of different takes on the January 6th violent insurrection, so it seems very unlikely to have made any difference to people's opinions of Trump. Also, I believe that for U.S. defamation, there has to be malicious intention proven which is very unlikely for the BBC case (seems more like a misguided edit rather than being deliberately slanderous).

I do wonder what would happen if the case goes ahead and is decided in Trump's favour - would the BBC refuse to pay and just ensure that none of their employees go to the U.S.?

As an aside, Trump has said that the BBC "Literally, they put words in my mouth. They had me saying things that I never said coming out.” which is blatantly a lie - they merely edited his words to bring together two distinct sentences in a misleading manner.

For the record, despite enjoying some of the BBC's output, I do find their journalistic integrity to be lacking - I've raised numerous complaints over the years to do with their atrocious RTC reporting - they always seem to be pushing motornormativity with their selection of passive voicing for drivers whilst demonising cyclists.

Comment by Someone 11 hours ago

> which is blatantly a lie - they merely edited his words to bring together two distinct sentences in a misleading manner

I think merely is not the right word to use. For example, let’s say I say

in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46285977, ndsipa_pomu wrote “I […] think the lawsuit has merit as […] it seems […] to have made any difference to people's opinions of Trump”

, isn’t that having ndsipa_pomu say things they never said?

Comment by ndsipa_pomu 10 hours ago

I get your point, but that's just editing text and I did not "say" those words, but typed them - the BBC was broadcasting parts of Trump's speech, so it is literally his words. Also, that's a lot more editing with your example and doesn't entirely make sense without the "not" - there's also the argument that deliberately leaving out negations is a malicious attempt to change the meaning.

The BBC editing was "merely" snipping out a bit in the middle - likely due to time constraints. I don't agree with their editing, but it's not in the same ballpark as your example.

Incidentally, I have previously raised a complaint with the BBC for one of their news articles when they edited a bike cam video by snipping out a bit in the middle. The removed part showed an aggressive driver performing a dangerous close pass on a group of cyclists, so without that, it made it look like the cyclists were hassling the driver for no reason.