US President against media
Trump sues BBC – broadcaster wants to defend himself
Updated 12/16/2025 – 1:37 p.mReading time: 3 minutes
Donald Trump is suing the BBC over a TV report about him. The US President has already taken action several times against media whose reporting he does not like.
US President Donald Trump is suing the world-famous BBC for a total of ten billion dollars and is once again taking action against media that he dislikes. The Republican’s lawyers accuse the broadcaster of having portrayed the US President in a “false and defamatory” broadcast. The BBC “deliberately and maliciously” attempted to deceive its viewers worldwide.
The BBC noted the complaint. “As we have previously made clear, we will defend ourselves in this case,” the broadcaster said at midday. No further comment will be made on the ongoing legal proceedings.
The background to the lawsuit is a dispute over the compilation of a speech by Trump on January 6, 2021, which the broadcaster used for the program “Panorama”. It was broadcast shortly before the presidential election in November 2024, in which Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris.
The lawsuit sum of ten billion dollars (around 8.5 billion euros) results from two charges, each of which demands five billion dollars. This involves defamation and violation of trade practices. The specific accusation: The BBC publicly damaged Trump’s reputation and also economically.
Trump had announced his lawsuit a month ago, and so far there had been talk of an amount between one and five billion dollars. The broadcaster’s annual revenue, derived from license fees and commercial revenue, was £5.9 billion (approximately €6.7 billion) in the last financial year.
For its broadcast, the BBC edited passages from different parts of Trump’s speech to his supporters at the time. On that January day, there was a violent storming of the Capitol in the US capital Washington, where the election victory of Trump’s then opponent, Democrat Joe Biden, was supposed to be officially confirmed.
Trump – then voted out of office after his first term (2017-2021) but still in office – repeated in his speech the repeatedly refuted claim that he had been deprived of his election victory through fraud. The editing makes his appearance appear more aggressive and demanding. After the speech, Trump’s supporters stormed the parliament building.
The Republican accused the renowned broadcaster of a “false, defamatory, misleading, derogatory, seditious and malicious” representation. The broadcaster wanted to interfere in the US presidential election and influence the outcome to its disadvantage. The current lawsuit alleges that the BBC omitted an important part of his speech in order to deliberately put the statements shown in a false context.
