BBC’s Apology, Not Apology

OPINION:

The BBC issued an apology to President Trump for falsely making it appear in a documentary that he called for violent protests on Capitol Hill. But a breath later, the BBC also said it wasn’t going to pay damages to Trump because — get this — he didn’t actually suffer any harm from the broadcast lie. No harm?

How about the harm to truth?

And you thought news organizations were in the business of reporting the truth.

“BBC apologizes to Trump over Panorama edit but refuses to pay compensation,” the BBC itself wrote in a headline a few days ago.

From the report: “The BBC has apologized to … Trump for a Panorama episode that spliced parts of his 6 January 2021 speech together, but rejected his demands for compensation. The corporation said the edit had given ‘the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action’ and said it would not show the 2024 program again.”

Yes. No need to show it anymore. Everybody’s already seen it. After all, it was available for viewing for about a year. And that was after top BBC news executives had been warned the “mistaken” splice was actually showing Trump saying something quite opposite of what he actually said — the “mistaken impression,” as the BBC put it.

Anywhere else, that’d be called a lie. 

“The state broadcaster argued the documentary did not harm Trump, given that he won the 2024 election after it was aired, that the documentary was not broadcast in the United States and that other pro-Trump voices were featured in the film,” Breitbart wrote.

BBC officials also said their news folk didn’t splice and dice out of biased intent to harm Trump politically. Rather, it was just an oopsie. Can’t we all just get along?

This is classic Apology, Not Apology. 

A genuine apology requires a fix of the damages, if possible. And apologizing for damages, while simultaneously suggesting there really aren’t any damages, is about as Not Apology as it comes.

So Trump is taking a stand.

He’s suing the BBC for somewhere between $1 billion and $5 billion.

“I think I have to do it,” he said, in remarks to reporters. “They’ve even admitted that they cheated … They cheated, they changed the words coming out of my mouth.”

The slimy executives at the BBC can claim no harm all they want. But the damage is to truth — and for a company that’s supposed to be in the business of truth, that’s everything. How to measure the extent of a lie’s damage? Five billion could be just a drop in the bucket.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.