FCC writes to BBC over Trump Panorama

The US broadcast regulator has written to the BBC to seek answers over the Panorama doc featuring an edited version of Donald Trump’s 6 January 2021 speech.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chief Brendan Carr has written to outgoing director general Tim Davie and the chief executives at US broadcasters NPR and PBS, whose member stations air some BBC content.

He accuses the BBC of “misleading and deceptive conduct”, with the offending doc – Trump: A Second Chance? – showing the President “voicing a sentence that, in fact, he never uttered”.

“That would appear to meet the very definition of publishing a materially false and damaging statement,” he said.

He has asked the BBC to clarify it provided the video or audio of the “spliced speech” to any broadcaster regulated by the FCC for airing in the US.

“I am writing to determine whether any FCC regulations have been implicated by the BBC’s misleading and deceptive conduct,” he said.

“As you may know, broadcasters regulated by the FCC have a legal obligation to operate in the public interest. Those public interest requirements include prohibitions on news distortion and broadcast hoax.”

The BBC has previously stated it has not distributed the Panorama episode on its US channels, and that it was restricted to viewers in the UK.

A BBC spokesperson confirmed receipt of the letter but said it has nothing to add to its previous public statements.

Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for between $1bn and $5bn over the Panorama, which he claims was defamatory. BBC chair Samir Shah has personally apologised for the “mistaken impression” given by the edit, but declined the demand for financial compensation claiming there is ‘no basis for a defamation case’.

Trump: A Second Chance? splices together two clips from the speech which Trump said around 50 minutes apart, showing him as saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”