BBC ‘can’t be held to ransom,’ says Dimbleby as Trump threatens legal action

The BBC “can’t be held to ransom,” David Dimbleby said after Donald Trump threatened legal action against the broadcaster following the selective editing of his speech outside the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 in a Panorama episode. A leaked memo raised concerns that clips of Mr Trump's speech had been spliced together to give the impression he had told supporters he would walk to the US Capitol with them to "fight like hell". Director-general Tim Davie and the head of BBC News, Deborah Turness, resigned over the episode, which aired the week before the 2024 US elections. “I'm a huge supporter of everything the BBC does, and to be tripped up by something like this seems to me absurd,” the former Question Time host told Channel 4. “Somebody's got to say, ‘What on earth went wrong?’... Because a vast organisation like the BBC can't be held to ransom by two incidents or three incidents.”