The BBC censored speech criticizing Trump. That appeasement was all for nothing as Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against it.
The BBC has become one of the more recent examples of why appeasing US fascist dictator, Donald Trump, never works. In November, the BBC aired a lecture that censored things that they felt would hurt Trumps precious little feelings. The sentence that was censored? “the most openly corrupt president in American history“.
Indeed, Trump is quite brazen with his corruption. Whether it is renaming buildings to be named after him, insisting that his face be placed on a coin, profiteering off of a crypto scam, and the many and various ways he breaks the law to enrich himself personally. The corruption is obvious and law enforcement has long just stood by and let the non-stop crime happen.
So, the person who made that comment isn’t really wrong by any means. In fact, it’s one of those rare moments of honesty found in journalism when covering Trump. The thing is, the BBC got all freaked out that they might commit thought crimes against the president and decided to pre-emptively censor that unusually honest speech. From TechDirt:
Well, at least we should call out Donald Trump as the most openly censorial president in American history.
This is the payoff from Trump’s censorship campaign against the BBC. Weeks ago, Trump threatened to sue the BBC for a billion dollars over an edit in a program it aired a year ago. The BBC apologized and fired employees associated with the project. That wasn’t enough. Trump’s FCC censorship lackey Brendan Carr launched a bullshit investigation anyway. And now the BBC is preemptively editing out true statements that might anger the thin-skinned man baby President.
The BBC admitted to this in the most mealy-mouthed way when asked by the New Republic to comment on the situation:
Asked for comment on Bregman’s charge, a spokesperson for the BBC emailed me this: “All of our programmes are required to comply with the BBC’s editorial guidelines, and we made the decision to remove one sentence from the lecture on legal advice.”
“On legal advice.” Translation: Trump’s SLAPP suit threats worked exactly as intended.
Greg Sargent, writing in the New Republic, nails why this matters:
There is something deeply perverse in this outcome. Even if you grant Trump’s criticism of the edit of his January 6 speech—never mind that as the violence raged, Trump essentially sat on his hands for hours and arguably directed the mob to target his vice president—the answer to this can’t be to let Trump bully truth-telling into self-censoring silence.
That’s plainly what happened here.
Exactly. The BBC’s initial capitulation—the apology, the firings, the groveling—was bad enough. But this is worse. This is pre-censorship. The BBC is now editing out true statements about Trump before they air, purely because they’re afraid of how he might react. That’s not “legal advice.” That’s cowardice institutionalized as policy.
Once again, I remind you that Trump’s supporters have, for years, insisted that he was “the free speech president” and have talked about academic freedom and the right to state uncomfortable ideas.
Yet, do we hear any of them complaining about this obvious suppression of speech following a clear and censorial threat from the president? Of course not. Will the media continue to pretend that Donald Trump supports free speech, even as he’s the most openly censorial president in history? Of course.
As a result, the BBC has taken a lot of criticism for preemptively censoring speech to appease the dictator. Sure, they’ll take heat for damaging their credibility by doing stuff like this, but it was all worth it in the end because they avoid getting a lawsuit, right?
Nope.
Later on, Trump would apparently file a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC for effectively hurting his precious little feelings. The lawsuit, unsurprisingly, is incredibly stupid. From TechDirt:
At issue was a BBC Panorama documentary about January 6th, in which there is (at worst) a slightly awkward edit: two separate sentences of Trump’s speech were shown one after another, despite being separated by over half an hour of Trumpian ramblings. The original claim was that this edit somehow changed the meaning of what Trump said, though in the past few days, Trump has been falsely claiming that the documentary used AI to make him say things he didn’t say.
The lawsuit makes zero mention of AI. Instead, it claims that they edited the two sentences together in a way that was misleading.
The lawsuit isn’t a surprise. He’s been talking about this for a few weeks now, even though (1) the BBC did nothing wrong, (2) the BBC still apologized, (3) the BBC effectively fired those who did the controversial edit, (4) the BBC has promised never to show the documentary again, and (5) the BBC has since bent over backwards to portray Trump positively.
The lawsuit is ridiculously stupid. As famed First Amendment lawyer Bob Corn-Revere told CNN:
The suit “does not have any legal basis, either on defamation or jurisdictional grounds,” said Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
“This is nothing more than the president’s latest effort to intimidate media companies that he sees as adversarial to his administration,” he said.
As he notes, the first hurdle is going to be the jurisdiction. Suing in Florida is a choice, given that the BBC only showed the documentary in the UK, not anywhere in the US, let alone Florida. Showing that the documentary somehow harmed Trump’s reputation in Florida will be virtually impossible if it actually got to that point (which it won’t).
The complaint tries to get around this by—I shit you not—claiming that because VPN usage is up in Florida, it likely means people are using VPNs in Florida to appear to be in the UK in order to watch BBC streams that are geo-locked to the UK. No, really:
According to vpnMentor, a VPN research firm, VPN usage in Florida has skyrocketed since 2024, with a 51% increase in demand on December 19, 2024, and an over 1,000% increase in VPN usage at the beginning of 2025.
Florida streamers have opted to use VPNs to increase their “streaming freedom.” Among the most popular streaming services accessed by viewers using a VPN is BBC’s online streaming platform, BBC iPlayer.
To that end, an article published by Tom’s Guide, a reputable technology news outlet, revealed that a VPN usage survey showed that approximately 41% of VPN subscribers use the service to stream content, citing BBC iPlayer as an example of what a VPN subscriber could view using a VPN.
The Panorama Documentary’s publicity, coupled with significant increases in VPN usage in Florida since its debut, establishes the immense likelihood that citizens of Florida accessed the Documentary before the BBC had it removed.
That is the kind of argument that should get a lawyer sanctioned.
Yes, it is a really dumb lawsuit, but it does show, yet again, that appeasing the dictator doesn’t work. People like Marjorie Taylor Greene did everything to do Trumps bidding and the thanks she got for her “service”? Accusations from Trump that she is a “stone cold liberal“.
Trump stabs every loyalist in the back sooner or later because he is a thin-skinned tantrum throwing man child. If you suck up to Trump, be prepared to eventually get a knife in your back. Whether you are a mouth breathing loyalist or just trying to get on Trumps good side to try and shimmy your way through the rest of Trumps presidency without getting burned, sucking up to him gets you nowhere. The BBC is now learning this the hard way. Lucky for the BBC, the Trump team are a bunch of idiots and will step on rakes along the way in their never ending quest for revenge. Still, the lesson should be this: don’t bother appeasing Trump. It doesn’t get you anything good these days.
Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.
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