Off Topic The Politics Thread

The letter that the BBC should send in reply to Trump's lawyers according to the Empty City blog......

Dear Sirs

We refer to your letter.

As a preliminary point, it is accepted that the edited video in the Panorama programme was an error which should not have been made by the production company or approved by us for broadcast. We apologise for that error both to our viewers generally and to your client in particular. It was a failure of commissioning, journalistic and editorial standards. The programme has been removed from our iPlayer online platform and it will not be broadcast again with the error.

But failures of commissioning, journalistic and editorial standards do not by themselves give rise to a legal claim. We have looked carefully at your client’s claim as set out in your letter, and for the reasons below that claim is denied.

Your letter provides no evidence that your client was aware of the programme when it was broadcast or for at least a year afterwards. If your client maintains this claim please disclose evidence for our pre-action inspection that your client was aware of the broadcast before the press coverage of the last two weeks. Please also inform us when you were first instructed in respect of this complaint. In your letter you are anxious that we retain relevant documents, and so we presume you also have relevant documents about your client’s awareness of the programme. If you do have such evidence, please confirm that is the case.

The programme was not broadcast in the United States generally or Florida in particular. Our programmes on iPlayer are not available in the United States. Please provide any evidence for our pre-action inspection that the programme was watched by any person in your jurisdiction. Again, given the document retention requirements you set out in your letter, you presumably have retained such documents. And again, if you do have such evidence, please confirm this is the case.

You state in your letter three times that your client has suffered “overwhelming financial and reputational harm”. This is presumably on the Beetlejuice principle that if you say something three times it somehow appears. But your letter contains no evidence of either financial or reputational harm, let alone both. And your letter certainly fails to provide evidence of any harm being “overwhelming”. Given that your client was actually re-elected to the presidency within days of this programme being shown (in the United Kingdom but not the United States) there is no obvious harm that was suffered by your client.

If you do have any evidence of the alleged harm, either “overwhelming” or at all , and if your client continues with this claim, please provide that for our pre-action inspection. Please also provide evidence that the programme was “widely disseminated throughout various digital mediums, which have reached tens of millions of people worldwide”.

Talking of “tens of millions” you provided no basis whatsoever for the figure of one billion dollars. Please confirm whether this is a billion in an English or an American sense. As the figure seems arbitrary, please provide your workings out of the quantum. As it stands, the figure has no more meaning than a demand for one trillion dollars, or for one dollar.

Both your client and the BBC believe in the value of freedom of expression. Your client benefits from the constitutional and other legal protections for free speech in the United States. The BBC also should have the benefit of the same protections. We made a mistake for which we have apologised and undertaken not to broadcast again. But this should not be a matter for the courts.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Yours faithfully

 

It wasn’t a mistake though nor have the various other things they’ve had to apologise for recently with far less fanfare. Just report what’s going on in the world, show Match of the Day and Strictly or whatever bollocks people like now and **** off. We don’t need BBC Arabic employing frothing Hamas fans, BBC Verify spending fortunes verifying **** all, protecting wealthy nonces, Radio 1.

 

Seems you really can make it up. Turns out the 'independent' advisor to the BBC, Michael Prescott, himself used selective editing of Trump's words in his report to portray them as less threatening than they acually were....

EXCLUSIVE: Michael Prescott himself doctored Trump quote in his anti-BBC report - The New World

It's a witch hunt.

 

It’s a **** hunt in an organisation riddled with ****s

 

Uber would be on one of those

 

A bit of background for you on Michael Prescott.....

The Pro-Trump Bias of the 'Neutral' Sources in the Leaked BBC 'Prescott Dossier' – Byline Times

UK Lawyers for Israel

These people aren't gunning for the BBC because it's institutionally biased against Trump and Israel - despite some well-catalogued lapses, it categorically isn't. They want to destroy it because they consider it to be insufficently biased in favour of Trump, Israel and sundry right-wing causes.They want to replace it with something less independent and more easily dictated to. Deliberately exposing the BBC to a potentially catastrophic law suit is an act of wilful sabotage.

The Beeb should offer Trump a Blue Peter badge in settlement and tell him that if he doesn't accept, he can **** off. He couldn't possibly win his case.

 

Despite all the massive examples where it is, it categorically isn’t then. They choose to employ Jeremy Bowen as head of Hamas cheerleading.

 

Pointless arguing, the BBC says it isn't biased and you have to accept it, they know best and anyone who says differently is a swivel-eyed far right thug. BBC Verify will confirm it. Their bunker mentality is the same as Starmer's in Downing St. As long as mugs like me continue to cough up £180 a year for channels I very rarely watch they'll carry on in their own bubble regardless, the entire funding needs radical change...

 

The BBC has admitted to lapses of judgment, but that doesn't mean that the whole corporation is institutionally biased. The more I think about the whole Trump fiasco, the less of a scandal for the BBC I see in it. So somebody selectively edited Trump's own words to make even more obvious what everybody already knew - that he incited an insurrection. So what? The US House Select Committe confirmed what Panorama sought to portray. If Trump hadn't won in 2024 he'd be in jail now and so, still, would all all the rioters he subsequently pardoned.

Michael Prescott also selectively edited Trump's words to make his case against the BBC - would you say he's biased? Or Robbie Gibb?

 

everyones biased
why do we pretend organisations arent