Outgoing BBC director general says he's ‘very proud’ of journalists after Trump threatened $1B lawsuit

By Aysu Bicer

LONDON (AA) - The outgoing BBC director general said he was “very, very proud” of BBC journalists a day after US President Donald Trump threatened to sue the corporation for $1 billion.

Speaking briefly to reporters outside BBC headquarters in London on Tuesday morning, Tim Davie said: “I’m here to lead and support the BBC. I’m very, very proud of our journalists in this building. The BBC is going to be thriving and I support everyone on the team. I want to thank every one of them. They’re doing a wonderful job.”

Davie and the BBC’s head of news, Deborah Turness, announced their resignations on Sunday after days of pressure sparked by a leaked memo written by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the national broadcaster.

The memo made a series of claims, including that a 2024 documentary had misleadingly edited a speech by Trump.

On Monday, BBC Chair Samir Shah apologized for what he called the documentary’s “error of judgement,” saying that splicing parts of Trump’s speech together “did give the impression of a direct call for violent action” concerning the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

Trump’s legal team has written to the BBC, giving the corporation until Friday to apologize and “appropriately compensate” him. Trump is known for aggressively suing news outlets whose coverage he disagrees with, including US networks CBS and ABC, which both gave the president millions of dollars in settlements.

Meanwhile, Nigel Huddleston, Conservatives’ shadow culture secretary, said the BBC should prostrate itself to Trump over the broadcast.

Huddleston told GB News: “Well, with a big apology and grovel because they were wrong, and Donald Trump has a perfectly legitimate concern here. It wasn’t ‘could be perceived’ to be misleading, it transparently was.”

Echoing the points made by Prescott, Huddleston added that the editing error was not the only problem with the documentary about Trump.