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Tuesday, November 11, 2025 |
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The same BBC board of governors that responded too slowly to last week's outcry about an editing screwup now has to urgently deal with President Trump's threat to sue over it. This is the British broadcaster's turn to decide whether to fight or fold.
And BBC staffers are on edge about whether the governors are up to the challenge.
This morning's Daily Mail cover says "Trump tells BBC: Grovel — or I'll sue you for $1 billion." The Independent's front page notes the ticking clock: "US president's legal team demands retraction by Friday — and compensation."
Trump's lawyers — from the same Florida-based firm that filed the president's suits against the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times — knew exactly what they were doing by sending the demand letter to the BBC yesterday.
The letter reads like an attempt at a shakedown. It claims that Trump suffered "overwhelming financial and reputational harm" due to a bad edit in a pre-election documentary, even though no one seemed to catch or call out the error at the time of the broadcast last year. It claims that the entire documentary should be retracted, even though the BBC has only admitted to an "error in judgment" with that one very brief edit. And it assigns a Friday 5 p.m. ET deadline. "The BBC is on notice," the letter says.
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Feeling the Trump squeeze |
We should note that "it's not clear that Trump has jurisdiction to sue," as media lawyer Mark Stephens told CNN's Max Foster yesterday. Aside from those "technical hurdles," the BBC may also have a "killer defense," he said, given what actually happened on January 6. Plus, the $1 billion figure is "totally meaningless," Media Law Resource Center exec director George Freeman told the BBC. He reminded listeners that Trump "has a long record of unsuccessful libel suits."
True, true, true. But we should also recognize that this is the Trump squeeze in action — an act we've seen several times this year against vulnerable media companies. The
Paramount settlement demonstrated one way to respond; the NYT's statement that it will not settle with Trump showed another.
When I was asked about the matter on the BBC's "Newsnight" program last night, I pointed out that the appearance of capitulation has been costly for US media brands like Disney, which lost subscribers when it suspended Jimmy Kimmel's show amid government pressure. And the BBC is keen to make inroads in the US, as Joel Simon recently wrote for CJR.
In the UK, too, if the BBC does anything but tell Trump's lawyers to bug off, the broadcaster will be seen as caving, and will face severe backlash. So let's zoom in on the board of governors dynamics...
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A 'wider political effort' afoot? |
The BBC is overseen by 13 board members led by non-executive chair Samir Shah. For the past two days, the corporation's defenders have been talking about an alleged conservative "coup," led by board member Robbie Gibb, that led to Tim Davie's shock resignation on Sunday.
The Guardian's Michael Savage conveyed all the claims and counter-claims in this Monday story. He described what allies of Davie and BBC News chief Deborah Turness, who also resigned, see as "a wider political effort to shift the BBC’s reporting to the right on key issues."
Savage also wrote that many BBC figures blame Shah "for allowing a vacuum that was ruthlessly exploited by the BBC's opponents" last week when The Telegraph wrote about the bad Trump edit and other claims of bias by Michael Prescott.
Shah acknowledged on Monday that "we should have acted earlier" about the documentary concerns. But he dismissed "fanciful" and "disrespectful" theories about a "coup."
Now the board has to act, and quickly, with the clock ticking down toward Friday. One has to wonder: If it's true, as The Observer asserted today, that the BBC is under "political attack," including from the inside, will some conservative board members seek to make peace with Trump, even if that means paying some of the license fee funds from British taxpayers?
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Davie held a company-wide call earlier today and "told staff he is 'fiercely proud' of the BBC, and that the organization must 'fight for our journalism,'" per the BBC's live blog about the resignation fallout and lawsuit threat. He also shared that Turness' deputy, Jonathan Munro, "will be in charge and, at the moment, is in charge editorially in the newsroom."
"We need to get on with our business and do our work," he said. But as journalists at CBS News can attest, it's very hard to do that when the parent company is embroiled in scandal and Trump-settlement speculation.
>> Further reading: Don't miss Tina Brown's latest Fresh Hell column about what's really going on with the BBC.
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Fox's Ingraham presses Trump |
Trump's Fox friends are sometimes so promotional and deferential during interviews that little gets challenged, and almost no news is ever made. However, Laura Ingraham was more strategic than that. On Monday, she sat down with Trump and scrutinized several of his policy proposals, forcing him to face dissension within the MAGA ranks — and seemingly catching the president off guard.
Ingraham was clearly trying to steer Trump in a direction she believes is more productive and politically successful. But Trump wasn't always having it. When she invoked Americans' dour outlook — "Why are people saying they are anxious about the economy? Why are they saying that?" — Trump leaned on his fake-polls crutch: "I don't know that they are saying that. I think polls are fake."
The Fox host also brought up the "significant MAGA backlash" to Bill Pulte's 50-year mortgage idea. Here's my analysis of the interview for CNN.com...
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Brendan Carr weighs in on Disney-YouTube TV dispute |
Last night's X post from Brendan Carr, more than a week into the Disney blackout on YouTube TV, was the FCC chair's first mention of Disney since he caused "Kimmelgate" back in September.
"Google and Disney need to get a deal done and end this blackout," Carr wrote. "People should have the right to watch the programming they paid for — including football. Get it done!"
Missing from Carr's post: Any "we can do this the easy way or the hard way" type rhetoric...
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Iger passes on a chance to comment |
"For those who thought Disney CEO Bob Iger's 'ManningCast' appearance during the Monday Night Football' contest" between the Packers and Eagles "would be a chance for the boss to make a public statement about the ESPN (and overall Disney) blackout on YouTube TV amid a corporate dispute, they were wrong," USA Today's Chris Bumbaca writes. The hosts didn't bring it up, and some fans were "furious" about the omission, SI's Ryan Phillips notes...
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>> Glenn Beck's The Blaze claimed to ID the likely Jan. 6 pipe-bomber, based on extremely thin evidence. And now they "could be left holding the bag for a potentially mammoth libel suit," Will Sommer reports for The Bulwark.
>> "British Muslim journalist Sami Hamdi, who has been held by US federal immigration for over two weeks, is set to be released and allowed to return to the UK," CNN's Hira Humayun and Zoe Sottile report.
>> "A few months into its new era, '60 Minutes' seems fine," Tom Jones points out in today's edition of The Poynter Report.
>> Vanity Fair is in rebuilding mode: This morning Mark Guiducci announced a bunch of new hires, including Ta-Nehisi Coates and Adrienne Green, and said Breaker's Lachlan Cartwright will be a contributing editor.
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Today's new nonfiction releases |
Twenty years after she released "What to Eat," nutrition expert Marion Nestle is out with a new edition, "What to Eat Now: The Indispensable Guide to Good Food, How to Find It, and Why It Matters."
>> Also new today: Sen. John Fetterman's memoir "Unfettered," Rep. Jim Clyburn's "The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation," and Chris Matthews' "Lessons from Bobby: Ten Reasons Robert F. Kennedy Still Matters."
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Look out for CNN's 'Shorts' |
Last month, we wrote quite a bit about the rollout of CNN's All Access streaming service. Now here's another example of the brand's video-centric digital expansion:
"CNN is revamping its app's homepage with a feed dedicated to short-form videos," Emma Roth reports for The Verge. "The new 'Shorts' tab houses a stream of clips with stories from CNN, allowing you to swipe through them like you would with TikTok or Instagram Reels." The "Shorts" are free, meaning you don't need All Access to watch.
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Briefly, media deals edition... |
>> A new ad deal between CNN and T-Mobile will highlight the telecom company's "SuperMobile" business service. (Variety)
>> MSNBC, which becomes MS NOW on Saturday, has inked "a multi-year deal with AccuWeather." (THR)
>> TIME "has launched an AI agent that lets people ask questions and generate text summaries and audio briefs drawn entirely from its 102-year-old archive." (Axios)
>> Sky News "has announced a new partnership with the Washington Post" to use the Post's AI-driven content platform. (The Desk)
>> iHeartMedia has struck a deal with TikTok "to create a podcast network full of creators." (THR)
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Ellison: 'There's no must-have' |
"It's important to know that there's no must-have for us," Paramount CEO David Ellison told investors last night, commenting on his bids for (CNN's parent) Warner Bros. Discovery without mentioning the company's name.
"We really look at this as buy-versus-build, and we absolutely have the ability to build to get to where we want to go," Ellison said. This aligns with what I reported from a source last month: That Ellison is "pragmatic and rational when it comes to value and pricing" for WBD. THR's Alex Weprin has a full dispatch about the earnings #'s here...
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>> New this morning: "OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT violated German copyright laws by reproducing lyrics from songs," a German court has ruled, in what Jörn Poltz and Friederike Heine call "a closely watched case" over the "use of lyrics to train its language models." (Reuters)
>> "It's a tad early for 2026 predictions, but given how the past few weeks have gone for OpenAI," Allison Morrow is willing to offer this one: "OpenAI isn't going public. Not in 2026, anyway. Maybe not ever." (CNN)
>> Patreon is introducing Quips, "which — you guessed it — are essentially tweets," Mia Sato writes. (The Verge)
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SNL accused of copying a sketch |
"Fans of BYUtv's 'Studio C' are accusing 'Saturday Night Live' of copying a sketch idea after both shows aired pieces titled 'Beauty and MrBeast' within the same week," Jed Rosenzweig writes over at LateNighter. He notes that "'parallel thinking' — when two teams independently land on the same premise — is a frequent occurrence in comedy, especially when both are riffing on the same cultural moment."
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>> David Szalay "won the Booker Prize for fiction on Monday for 'Flesh.'" (CNN)
>> Netflix's opposition to theatrical releases is showing "cracks" as "pressure mounts from exhibitors and talent," Adam Chitwood and Umberto Gonzalez write. (TheWrap)
>> Music tourism is in the spotlight "after Puerto Rico's tourism and economic boom following Bad Bunny's residency," Tere Aguilera reports. (Billboard)
>> ABC's "New Year's Rockin' Eve" is "adding a live Central Time zone countdown from Chicago for the first time in the show's five-decade history." (LateNighter)
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