BBC leaders to face lawmakers’ grilling over its standards after Trump threatened to sue

LONDON (AP) – The BBC’s chairman and other senior leaders will face tough questions on its editorial standards from lawmakers on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to file a billion-dollar lawsuit over a misleading edit of his speech.

The British broadcaster’s chairman Samir Shah, board member Robbie Gibb and former editorial adviser Michael Prescott will be quizzed at a hearing with Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

The publicly-funded corporation was plunged into a major crisis after its director general and head of news both quit earlier this month and Trump said he was poised to sue over misleading editing in a BBC documentary broadcast days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

The third-party production company that made the film, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?”, spliced together three quotes from a speech Trump gave on Jan. 6, 2021, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.”

The editing made it look like Trump was directly encouraging his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Shah, the BBC chairman, acknowledged that the documentary gave “the impression of a direct call for violent action.”

The BBC said Shah has sent a letter to the White House saying that he and the corporation were sorry for the edit of the speech.

But the broadcaster said it had not defamed Trump and rejected the basis for his lawsuit threat.

Lawmakers at Monday’s parliamentary session will focus on questions about editorial standards raised by Prescott, a former journalist and and external editorial standards adviser to the BBC.

Prescott was the author of an internal note to BBC bosses that raised concerns about the editing of the Trump speech, as well as other instances of alleged left-leaning “institutional bias” at the BBC including its coverage of Gaza and transgender issues.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper published that note in early November, sparking the latest crisis.

Last week Shumeet Banerji, a BBC board member, also said he was stepping down over “governance issues,” sparking further questions about the corporation’s leadership.