Not content with an apology and the resignation of two top BBC executives, President Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit Monday against the BBC in his continued strategy to take the press to court.
Beyond the legal attack on yet another media outlet, the litigation represents an audacious move against a national institution of a trusted ally. It hinges on an edit presented in a documentary of the president's words on a fateful day. Oddly enough, it also hinges on the appeal of a niche streaming service to people in Florida, and the use of a technological innovation embraced by porn devotees.
A sloppy edit
At the heart of Trump's case stands an episode of the BBC television documentary program Panorama that compresses comments Trump made to his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, before they laid siege to the U.S. Capitol.
The episode seamlessly links Trump's call for people to walk up to the Capitol with his exhortation nearly 55 minutes later: "And we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell you don't have a country anymore."
Trump's attorneys argue that the presentation gives viewers the impression that the president incited the violence that followed. They said his remarks had been doctored, not edited, and noted the omission of his statement that protesters would be "marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
As NPR and other news organizations have documented, many defendants in the Jan. 6 attack on Congress said they believed they had been explicitly urged by Trump to block the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's victory.
Trump's lawsuit calls the documentary "a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump."
The lawsuit alleges that the depiction was "fabricated" and aired "in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election to President Trump's detriment."
While the BBC has not filed a formal response to the lawsuit, the public broadcaster has reiterated that it will defend itself in court.
A Nov. 13 letter to Trump's legal team on behalf of the BBC from Charles Tobin, a leading U.S. First Amendment attorney, argued that the broadcaster has demonstrated contrition by apologizing, withdrawing the broadcast, and accepting the executives' resignations.
Tobin also noted, on behalf of the BBC, that Trump had already been indicted by a grand jury on four criminal counts stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including his conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, on the Capitol grounds.
The appeal of BritBox
For all the current consternation about the documentary, it didn't get much attention at the time. The BBC aired the documentary twice on the eve of the 2024 elections — but never broadcast it directly in Florida.
That matters because the lawsuit was filed in Florida, where Trump alleges that the program was intended to discourage voters from voting for him.
Yet Tobin notes, Trump won Florida in 2024 by a "commanding 13-point margin, improving over his 2020 and 2016 performances in the state."
Trump failed to make the case that Floridians were influenced by the documentary, Tobin wrote. He said the BBC did not broadcast the program in Florida through U.S. channels. (The BBC has distribution deals with PBS and NPR and their member stations for television and radio programs, respectively, but not to air Panorama.)
It was "geographically restricted" to U.K. viewers, Tobin wrote.
Hence the argument in Trump's lawsuit that American viewers have other ways to watch it. The first is BritBox, a BBC streaming service that draws more on British mysteries set at seaside locales than BBC coverage of American politics.
Back in March, then-BBC Director General Tim Davie testified before the House of Commons that BritBox had more than 4 million subscribers in the U.S. (The BBC did not break down how many subscribers it has in Florida or how often Panorama documentaries are viewed by subscribers in the U.S. or the state, in response to questions posed by NPR for this story.)
"The Panorama Documentary was available to BritBox subscribers in Florida and was in fact viewed by these subscribers through BritBox and other means provided by the BBC," Trump's lawsuit states.
NPR searched for Panorama documentaries on the BritBox streaming service through the Amazon Prime platform, one of its primary distributors. The sole available episode dates from 2000. Trump does not mention podcasts. Panorama is streamed on BBC Sounds. Its episodes do not appear to be available in the U.S. on such mainstream podcast distributors in the U.S. such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Pocket Casts, according to a review by NPR.
Software that enables anonymous browsing - of porn
Another way Trump's lawsuit suggests people in the U.S. could watch that particular episode of Panorama, if they were so inclined, is through a Virtual Private Network, or VPN.
Trump's suit says millions of Florida citizens use VPNs to view content from foreign streamers that would otherwise be restricted. And the BBC iPlayer is among the most popular streaming services accessed by viewers using a VPN, Trump's lawsuit asserts.
In response to questions from NPR, the BBC declined to break down figures for how many people in the U.S. access the BBC iPlayer through VPNs.
Demand for such software did shoot up in 2024 and early 2025. Yet, according to analysts — and even to materials cited by the president's team in his own case — the reason appears to have less to do with foreign television shows and more to do with online pornography.
Under a new law, Florida began requiring age verification checks for visitors to pornographic websites, notes Paul Bischoff, editor of Comparitech, a site that reviews personal cybersecurity software.
"People use VPNs to get around those age verification and site blocks," Bischoff says. "The reason is obvious."
An article in the Tampa Free Press cited by Trump's lawsuit to help propel the idea of a sharp growth of interest in the BBC actually undercuts the idea in its very first sentence - by focusing on that law.
"Demand for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) has skyrocketed in Florida following the implementation of a new law requiring age verification for access to adult websites," the first paragraph states. "This dramatic increase reflects a widespread effort by Floridians to bypass the restrictions and access adult content."
Several legal observers anticipate possible settlement
Several First Amendment attorneys tell NPR they believe Trump's lawsuit will result in a settlement of some kind, in part because there's new precedent. In the past year, the parent companies of ABC News and CBS News have each paid $16 million to settle cases filed by Trump that many legal observers considered specious.
"The facts benefit Trump and defendants may be concerned about reputational harm," says Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond who specializes in free speech issues. "The BBC also has admitted it could have done better and essentially apologized."
Some of Trump's previous lawsuits against the media have failed. He is currently also suing the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Des Moines Register and its former pollster, and the board of the Pulitzer Prize.
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