{"id":266540,"date":"2025-11-16T19:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T19:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/266540\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T19:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T19:22:07","slug":"bbc-should-not-pay-trump-any-money-says-former-director-general-tony-hall-bbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/266540\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC should not pay Trump any money, says former director general Tony Hall | BBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BBC should not pay any money to Donald Trump<\/a>, the former BBC director general Tony Hall has said.<\/p>\n

The US president has said he plans to sue the BBC<\/a> for up to $5bn (\u00a33.8bn) despite receiving the apology he demanded over a misleading Panorama edit of his 6 January speech.<\/p>\n

Speaking to BBC One\u2019s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Hall said the move should be blocked if Trump proceeded with his threats. \u201cNo, [it] should not happen,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think we should agree to any money being paid to Donald Trump. You\u2019re talking about licence fee payers\u2019 money, you\u2019re talking about public money. It would not be appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall, who stepped down as director general in 2020 after seven years in the role, called the video edit a \u201cserious error\u201d, and said it should have \u201cbeen recognised as such much earlier in the whole process\u201d. But he said he also worried that the \u201chard work, diligence and the belief in impartiality\u201d of BBC journalists had been lost in the debate.<\/p>\n

The row over an episode of Panorama from last year about the Capitol riot in 2021 led to accusations of bias at the broadcaster and the resignation<\/a> of two of the most senior executives at the BBC: the director general, Tim Davie; and Deborah Turness, the chief executive of news.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, reports said the BBC faced separate accusations of misleading viewers about Trump\u2019s 2021 Capitol speech more than two years before the Panorama edit aired.<\/p>\n

In an episode broadcast in June 2022, Newsnight reportedly played an edited version of his speech, similar to the one used in the Panorama programme. A BBC spokesperson said about the fresh claims, reported by the Telegraph\u2019s Daily T podcast: \u201cThe BBC holds itself to the highest editorial standards. This matter has been brought to our attention and we are now looking into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The BBC, which has agreed not to show the edition of Panorama again, sent an apology to Trump on Thursday<\/a> but said there was no legal basis for him to sue the public broadcaster over a documentary his lawyers called defamatory. On Friday evening Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One: \u201cWe\u2019ll sue them for anywhere between a billion and $5bn, probably sometime next week. We have to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The BBC chair, Samir Shah, sent a personal apology on Thursday to the White House and told lawmakers the edit was \u201can error of judgment\u201d. The following day the culture minister, Lisa Nandy, said the apology was \u201cright and necessary\u201d.<\/p>\n

Turmoil erupted at the BBC after the clip re-emerged a week ago when a leaked internal memo highlighted the misleading edit, in which the US president appeared to say: \u201cWe\u2019re going to walk down to the Capitol \u2026 and I\u2019ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

The verbatim quote from the speech was: \u201cWe\u2019re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we\u2019re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.\u201d More than 50 minutes later Trump added: \u201cAnd we fight. We fight like hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview with GB News on Friday, Trump said the edit was \u201cimpossible to believe\u201d. He added: \u201cI made a beautiful statement, and they made it into a not beautiful statement. Fake news was a great term, except it\u2019s not strong enough. This is beyond fake, this is corrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The BBC should not pay any money to Donald Trump, the former BBC director general Tony Hall has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-266540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}