Why the BBC is right not to pay damages to Trump

12 thoughts on “Why the BBC is right not to pay damages to Trump”

1. Great article Dave. I agree BBC handled well but I really got annoyed when their own news bulletin earlier today led with “President Trump hasn’t responded yet” – who the hell cares?!! Until he does ignore him and his flunkeys.

2. I’m rather surprised that few if any commentators are saying that the Panorama edit is substantially accurate and shows us the effect of Trump’s words on his loyal followers (who included the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers).
   Here are quotes from what he actually said.
   “Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down.
   Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
   Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
   If we allow this group of people to illegally take over our country because it’s illegal when the votes are illegal when the way they got there is illegal when the states that vote are given false and fraudulent information.
   Together, we are determined to defend and preserve government of the people, by the people and for the people.
   Because nobody until I came along had any idea how corrupt our elections were.
   They want to come in again and rip off our country. Can’t let it happen.
   And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.
   But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help. We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.
   unquote
   The message being, we must all go to the Capitol and intimidate the Republican senators into supporting Trump’s claim that he won the election.
   And afterwards?
   Former President Donald Trump insisted that the Jan. 6 attack, when his supporters stormed the Capitol and assaulted scores of law enforcement officers, was not a day of violence, but a “day of love” when “nothing” was “done wrong.”

   1. A defence that a libel is “substantially” true is always a tricky one to mount, as it involves fine judgement calls. It can effectively be a defence of last resort.

      The BBC’s five reasons include this ground, as it should, but it would have been better had there been no mistake at all.

3. The BBC has done well in this case, so far. Let us help it stand its ground.

4. I want to take us back to the weeds for a moment, if I may. I have a question about the intersect of legal jurisdiction and “the internet”, given that implicitly, “BBC iPlayer” is an internet-based streaming service.

   From a legal, contractual perspective, if I as a UK citizen were to buy a product from Amazon, an American multinational company, the contract of sale is enacted under Luxembourg Law and transacted with a Luxembourg entity. In other words, my used of the “amazon.co.uk” web site is conditional upon my acceptance that my dealings with the parent comany must be effected through their wholly-owned Luxembourg subsidiary, a practice done so as to remove any legal requirement for the company to pay “Corporation Tax” in the UK.

   But does that same principle of legal venue apply in the case of the Panorama broadcast over iPlayer? If we consider the term “broadcast” for a moment and look first at the conventional UHF transmission that delivers regular BBC programming to our homes in the UK. There is a BBC building with a transmission ariel on it. Equipment in the building sends the broadcast to the transmission ariel… The broadcast then travels via EM radiation to our rooftop television ariels and thus reaches our television sets.

   By the same token, it seems to me that any iPlayer based broadcast of any television program must necessarily start in a UK location. So if the grievance alleged relates to the making of an inaccurate and misleading program publicly available, then that act took place on UK soil and thus would be governed by UK law. Not Florida law, which is the de facto argument being put forward by the President’s counsel.

   Obviously we’re well aware of the US legal practice of “venue shopping” – something that became an issue thanks to the politicised nature of appointing judges – but I don’t see how that can work at an international level.

   I appreciate that the nature of the BBC’s first initial response to the complaint is not, strictly speaking, a legal one. But I would be very interested if someone would care to comment about any steps the BBC could and perhaps should take to ensure that they don’t get sucked in to a legal fight “on foreign soil”.

   Does this became a question for international law? Could it be akin to a trade dispute between nations?

   If this had been something that garnered more press attention in the US than it has, I would be suggesting that perhaps the motive behind this – and perhaps the explanation behind the curious timing – was that this was intended solely as a mechanism to divert US media attention away from the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein story.

   Perhaps that was the plan all along and it was simply botched by the publicists.

   But I still don’t see how the President – no matter the strength of his legal complaint – can have standing to sue the BBC in Florida for a crime he alleges took place in the UK.

   Or am I missing something?

   1. It’s an interesting point which I imagine will be hammered out in pre-trial proceedings, if the case gets that far. But while I, as a non-lawyer, would share your opinion, it could be interesting to look at it from another angle.

      Suppose that the programme, after broadcast in the UK, received wide publicity in the US and then Trump narrowly lost the election (dream on …). Would Trump then not have standing to sue in the US? And if not, where? Would it be a defence for the BBC to claim it had never intended the programme to be an available in the US? Can a publisher of a particular work in one country be sued for libel in a different country if there was no evidence that the publication had been intentionally made available in that second country? The question must surely have been addressed before.

5. Another cool, clear, considered piece. Thank goodness for David Allen Green

   1. Hear hear

6. Great article in the New Statesman David.

   You might like to know though that, according to the BBC, it was actually BBC staff and not the production company, October Films, who edited Trump’s speech so egregiously. Third paragraph in the link below.

   https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgk4devj77o

7. There is an inherent problem when good willing, reasonable people want to communicate with the malevolent and the unreasonable.

   Donald Trump now saying he wants to sue for anywhere between 1 and 5 gazillion Mordordollars.

   Meanwhile we must pray for the Joseph Nye Welch-moment, a human being in the right place at the right time with sufficient clout, saying the magic words : Sir, have you no shame?

   Or may be a 21st century variation on that, on the lines of: Eff off, you container of excrement.

   Well, here’s hoping.
   Maybe the elder brother of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor could stap in. Fun times.

8. At the risk of over-thinking this – and I stress that such a label should be affixed to this reply – one thought just occurred to me. In the broader landscape of US politics, something we’ve not seen before is happening – the most staunch media supporters of President Trump are starting to back away. I’m not referring to Marjorie Taylor-Green, but to Fox News – you may have seen a recent interview the President gave to Laura Ingram in which she started to fact-check him in real time, to his visible irritation.

   So what if the President has designs on extending his political life – perhaps an extension to his second term or even a third. It seems possible – likely? – that if that were to happen then even some presently supportive media outlets would consider this a “step too far” and rebel. Outlets such as OAN – One America News – don’t have the visibility or coverage that Fox does… But *everyone* has heard of the BBC.

   Now… I realise just how insane this thought is, but what if the President has just upped his demands from $1 to $5 billion dollars, because he wants to amount set at more than the estimated value of the entire BBC. He’s going to have to pay legal costs, of course, but if he wins and bankrupts the BBC, he could demand control of the corporation in restitution.

   I appreciate that the “ownership” of the BBC is not straightforward, so his increase in demand might be an attempt to get the UK government to underwrite any potential Trump win.

   But it could equally easily be a slightly more tactica move, positioning himself before legal conflict is joined to be poised to make such a demand in the event that his arguments prevail.

   Outrageous? Certainly. Unlikely? That too.

   Impossible. Well, to quote Captain Jean-Luc Picard: “Things are only impossible until they’re not!”

9. My heart sank when it was announced that Keir Starmer is to go and discuss this matter with Trump. The BBC isn’t a “state broadcaster” and this matter isn’t government business, despite any fears the P.M. may have for future trade-relations if the man-baby continues to pout.

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