BBC shouldn't pay a single penny to Donald Trump says former boss

The former top dog at the BBC has told them they should not pay a penny to Donald Trump . Lord Tony Hall, who was the director-general for seven years until 2020, urged them not to cave in to his demands. The Orange Manbaby has threatened to sue the Beeb and said he wants up to $5 billion compo after it emerged they aired an edited version of him talking at a rally. It has already apologised to the US President for a Panorama episode that spliced parts of his January 6, 2021 speech together. But they have rejected his demands for compensation with Trump warning he could sue for to between $1bn (£759m) and $5bn. Lord Hall said: “No, [it] should not happen. You’re talking about public money. It would not be appropriate.” Controversy around how Trump’s speech was edited has led to the resignations of BBC director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness. Lord Hall told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg the video edit was a “serious error” and should have “been recognised as such much earlier in the whole process”. He said he worried that the “hard work, diligence and the belief in impartiality” of BBC journalists had been lost in the debate. Last Thursday, the BBC published a statement on its Corrections and Clarifications page about the incident. It said the Panorama programme, which was only broadcast on October 28, 2024, had been reviewed after criticism of how Trump’s speech had been edited. The statement said: “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 have also confirmed that their lawyers have written to Trump’s legal team. In an interview with GB News on Saturday, Trump said he had an “obligation” to sue the BBC over the “egregious” edit. He added: “If you don’t do it, you don’t stop it from happening again with other people.”