BBC apologizes to Trump over its misleading edit, but says there's no basis for a defamation claim

LONDON (AP) — The BBC apologized Thursday to U.S. President Donald Trump over a misleading edit of his speech on Jan. 6, 2021 but said it had not defamed him, rejecting the basis for his $1 billion lawsuit threat.

The BBC said Chair Samir Shah sent a personal letter to the White House saying that he and the corporation were sorry for the edit of the speech Trump gave before some of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.

The publicly funded broadcaster said there are no plans to rebroadcast the documentary, which had spliced together parts of his speech that came almost an hour apart.

“We accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action," the BBC wrote in a retraction.

Trump’s lawyer had sent the BBC a letter demanding an apology and threatened to file a $1 billion lawsuit for the harm the documentary caused him. It had set a Friday deadline for the BBC to respond.

While the BBC statement doesn’t respond to Trump’s demand that he be compensated for “overwhelming financial and reputational harm," the headline on its news story about the apology said it refused to pay compensation.

The dispute was sparked by an edition of the BBC’s flagship current affairs series “Panorama,” titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” broadcast days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

The third-party production company that made the film spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.”

Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

Director-General Tim Davie, along with news chief Deborah Turness, quit Sunday, saying the scandal was damaging the BBC and “as the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, the buck stops with me.”

The letter from Trump's lawyer demanded an apology to the president and a “full and fair” retraction of the documentary along with other “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading or inflammatory statements” about Trump.

Legal experts have said that Trump would face challenges taking the case to court in the U.K. or the U.S. They said that the BBC could show that Trump wasn’t harmed because he was ultimately elected president in 2024.

Deadlines to bring the case in English courts, where defamation damages rarely exceed 100,000 pounds ($132,000) expired more than a year ago. Because the documentary was not shown in the U.S., it would be hard to show that Americans thought less of him because of a program they could not watch.

While many legal experts have dismissed the president’s claims against the media as having little merit, he has won some lucrative settlements against U.S. media companies and he could try to leverage the BBC mistake for a payout, potentially to a charity of his choice.

In July, Paramount, which owns CBS, agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump over a “ 60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump alleged that the interview was edited to enhance how Harris, the Democratic nominee for president in 2024, sounded.

That settlement came as the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission launched an investigation that threatened to complicate Paramount’s need for administration approval to merge with Skydance Media.

Last year, ABC News said it would pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos ’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. A jury found that he was liable for sexually abusing her.

The apology and retraction came as BBC said it was looking into a report in the Daily Telegraph that its Newsnight program in 2022 had similarly spliced together parts of the same speech by Trump.

A view of the logo outside the BBC Headquarters in London, Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

FILE - President Donald Trump speaks at a rally on Jan. 6, 2021, in front of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

BAGHDAD (AP) — An American journalist who was kidnapped in Baghdad had tried to cross from Syria into Iraq three weeks earlier and was initially turned back, an Iraqi official said Wednesday.

U.S. and Iraqi officials said Shelly Renee Kittleson had also been warned of threats against her in the days before her abduction. A freelance journalist who has worked for years in Iraq and Syria, Kittleson was kidnapped from a street in the Iraqi capital Tuesday and remains missing.

Hussein Alawi, an adviser to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, said Kittleson had sought to enter via the al-Qaim crossing from Syria on March 9 but was turned back because she did not have a press work permit and because security concerns due to “the escalation of the war and aerial projectiles over Iraqi airspace as a result of the war on Iran.”

She later entered the country after obtaining a single-entry visa to Iraq valid for 60 days issued to allow foreign citizens stranded in neighboring countries to “transit through Iraq to reach their home countries via available transport routes,” he said.

Kittleson entered Baghdad a few days before she was kidnapped and was staying in a hotel in the capital, he said.

“The incident is being followed closely by Iraqi security and intelligence agencies under the supervision of” al-Sudani, Alawi said. He noted that one suspect believed to be involved in the kidnapping plot has been arrested and is being interrogated.

Iraqi security forces gave chase to her captors and arrested one suspect after the car he was driving crashed, but other kidnappers were able to escape with the journalist in a second car.

An Iraqi intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, said Iraqi authorities believe she is being held in Baghdad and are trying to locate her and secure her release. He said authorities “have information about the abducting party” but declined to give more details.

U.S. officials have alleged that Kittleson was taken by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-linked Iraqi militia that has been implicated in previous kidnappings of foreigners. The group has not claimed the kidnapping and the Iraqi government has not publicly said anything about the kidnappers' affiliation.

The Iraqi intelligence official said that prior to Kittleson's abduction, Iraqis had contacted U.S. officials to notify them that there was a specific kidnapping threat against her by Iran-affiliated militias.

Dylan Johnson, U.S. assistant secretary of state for public affairs, said on X Tuesday that the “State Department previously fulfilled our duty to warn this individual of threats against them.”

A U.S. official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said, “She was contacted multiple times with warnings of the threats against her," including as late as the night before the kidnapping.

Surveillance footage that was obtained by The Associated Press shows what seems to be the moment the journalist was kidnapped in Baghdad. It shows two men approaching a person standing on a street corner and ushering the person into the back of a car. There appears to be a brief struggle to shut the car door before the men get into the vehicle and it drives away.

Iran-backed militias in Iraq have launched regular attacks on U.S. facilities in the country since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

A street view shows the street corner in central Baghdad's Saadoun Street where U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in central Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, April 1 2026. (AP Photo/ Hadi Mizban)

A street view shows the street corner in central Baghdad's Saadoun Street where U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in central Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, April 1 2026. (AP Photo/ Hadi Mizban)