The letter the BBC could send back to Trump

A proposal for a reply to his $1bn claim

*

Welcome to the Empty City blog, the name of which is explained here. This blog offers independent and informed commentary and law and policy and is funded by subscribers.

Posts like these take time and opportunity cost - and this blog (currently) is free-to-view and does not have advertising. So if you do genuinely value independent and informed law and policy commentary (rather than AI slop, client journalism, or litigation PR) please become a paying subscriber.

*

Yesterday this blog offered a close reading of the letter Trump’s lawyers had sent to the British Broadcasting Corporation. As a follow-up, this is a letter that the BBC could send in reply.

*

Dear Sirs

We refer to your letter.

As a preliminary point, it is accepted that the edited video in the Panorama programme was an error which should not have been made by the production company or approved by us for broadcast. We apologise for that error both to our viewers generally and to your client in particular. It was a failure of commissioning, journalistic and editorial standards. The programme has been removed from our iPlayer online platform and it will not be broadcast again with the error.

But failures of commissioning, journalistic and editorial standards do not by themselves give rise to a legal claim. We have looked carefully at your client’s claim as set out in your letter, and for the reasons below that claim is denied.

Your letter provides no evidence that your client was aware of the programme when it was broadcast or for at least a year afterwards. If your client maintains this claim please disclose evidence for our pre-action inspection that your client was aware of the broadcast before the press coverage of the last two weeks. Please also inform us when you were first instructed in respect of this complaint. In your letter you are anxious that we retain relevant documents, and so we presume you also have relevant documents about your client’s awareness of the programme. If you do have such evidence, please confirm that is the case.

The programme was not broadcast in the United States generally or Florida in particular. Our programmes on iPlayer are not available in the United States. Please provide any evidence for our pre-action inspection that the programme was watched by any person in your jurisdiction. Again, given the document retention requirements you set out in your letter, you presumably have retained such documents. And again, if you do have such evidence, please confirm this is the case.

You state in your letter three times that your client has suffered “overwhelming financial and reputational harm”. This is presumably on the Beetlejuice principle that if you say something three times it somehow appears. But your letter contains no evidence of either financial or reputational harm, let alone both. And your letter certainly fails to provide evidence of any harm being “overwhelming”. Given that your client was actually re-elected to the presidency within days of this programme being shown (in the United Kingdom but not the United States) there is no obvious harm that was suffered by your client.

If you do have any evidence of the alleged harm, either “overwhelming” or at all , and if your client continues with this claim, please provide that for our pre-action inspection. Please also provide evidence that the programme was “widely disseminated throughout various digital mediums, which have reached tens of millions of people worldwide”.

Talking of “tens of millions” you provided no basis whatsoever for the figure of one billion dollars. Please confirm whether this is a billion in an English or an American sense. As the figure seems arbitrary, please provide your workings out of the quantum. As it stands, the figure has no more meaning than a demand for one trillion dollars, or for one dollar.

Both your client and the BBC believe in the value of freedom of expression. Your client benefits from the constitutional and other legal protections for free speech in the United States. The BBC also should have the benefit of the same protections. We made a mistake for which we have apologised and undertaken not to broadcast again. But this should not be a matter for the courts.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Yours faithfully

[ ]

*