How Trump could bankrupt the BBC

0:02The Telegraph

0:10Can Donald Trump bring down the BBC? The Daily Tea broke the story that he quotes in his lawsuit against the corporation. To pick through all the detail, we're going to be joined by the BBC's own former legal eagle, Joshua Rosenberg. And should doctors be banned from striking? Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Kim Inna Tomini. And me, Tim Stanley.

0:40Tim, before we discuss whether Trump has the potential to bankrupt the BBC, you've had a Christmas card cock up. I wrote two cards and I think I put them in the wrong envelope, which means that my cleaner got a card that said, Dear Pretty, Merry Christmas. And it also means that Pretty Patel got a card that said, Thank you for everything this year with£40 in it. Wow. Do you think the former home secretary will give that back? As it was for a cleaner, I wish I had added, thank you for everything this year and for your discretion,£40. I love that you've given your cleaner£40. But will Pretty, if I have done this, will Pretty give the money back?

1:19Also, you can't really check it, can you? I don't think she will. Because are you going to phone her? I think she'll pocket it. Are you going to phone her and say, oh, by the way, I think I've made an error? I think, quite frankly, Tim Stanley, I've earned that money this year. I think you'll find that all of your requests for quotes for your stories, tim stanley mean i can have 40 pounds but i will spend on the local conservative association um also i saw you writing your cards last week i don't think i got one oh no i only send them to people who i get one from no you're not going to get one from me i'm afraid every time a card lands on the mat i open it and curse the person who sent it it has also become so expensive to send them.

1:57Yes, I know. It's about£5 a card, isn't it? I sent 10, including three abroad, and it came to something like£25. Yeah, it could have been 11, but I won't hold it against you. You sit next to me. Are we witnessing the decline and fall of the BBC, Tim? Because Donald Trump has followed up on his threat of suing the BBC by now laying down a$10 billion lawsuit. We thought it was$1 billion at one point. It's actually 10 now. It's now 10. Again, the BBC is, one might even argue, misreporting it by saying it's$5 billion. But the point is it's on two counts of$5 billion, so it adds up to$10. But I do find it curious that the BBC has slightly downplayed it to$5 billion.

2:38Although it is doing this masochistic thing of reporting its own potential demise. Yes, yes. To analyse the legality of it all, we're joined by Joshua Rosenberg, the legal eagle that once worked for the BBC. I'm just going to fangirl you very quickly. you were sort of the inspiration for me becoming a journalist because I studied law at university and then I thought, look at this guy who's combining the two. He's doing law and journalism. So I just wanted to say that to you before we get into it. It's embarrassing, isn't it? Thank you. And your wife inspired me into becoming a journalist. So there you go, because you are married to Melanie Phillips.

3:14And she inspired me to become a journalist because she trained as a journalist when I was still training as a lawyer. There we are, a little merry-go-round Kind of mutual adjuration there. Now, the exciting thing for us, Joshua, sorry to be slightly arrogant about this. Obviously, this lawsuit is on the back of the Telegraph's investigation into this splicing of the Trump speech ahead of the January the 6th riots in Panorama. But lo and behold, and you've blogged about this and mentioned it, are exclusive on the Daily Tea that they'd also spliced the speech for an episode of Newsnight in 2022 features in this 33-page document.

3:51Pages 18 to 20. We're in the footnotes, Tim. Very important. And that is an argument that he puts in order to establish malice, which is very important because you have to establish malice if you're going to sue for defamation in the United States. And he says, look, the BBC knew that this was misleading. They knew that they had spliced together two clips from that speech, apparently slightly differently. they knew that because they interviewed people on that edition of Newsnight who pointed it out live on air so they must have been aware now you and I know that the BBC is a large organization and the private company that produced the Panorama program wasn't dealt with by the same people who worked on the Newsnight program but from the president's point of view the BBC's corporate memory should have been aware that this was misleading.

4:43Ten billion dollars sounds like a huge amount. What are the chances of Trump extricating any money at all from the national broadcaster? Because there are many who are just saying this is all bark and no bite. Well, first of all, to deal with the very interesting point that the BBC is continuing to report this as a$5 billion claim, but The Telegraph and just about every other news organisation that I've seen is reporting it as a$10 billion claim. The only justification for saying$5 billion is that's the figure on a cover sheet filed by President Trump's lawyers to the court in Florida. But as you rightly say, there are two separate claims.

5:24One is for defamation as such, and the other is under a statute passed in the United States. It's called the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. And he is claiming$5 billion plus costs and punitive damages on each of those. And it seems to me, and certainly to The Telegraph, that you add those two together. It seems to the BBC that these are two ways of claiming the same amount. But to turn to your specific question, the question really is whether the BBC fights this in court or settles. If it fights this in court, there's no knowing what a jury will award, assuming it goes to a jury and President Trump is asking for a jury trial.

6:08Of course, if there is a jury award, that could be appealed by the BBC and that would be settled by an appeal court. So there's no knowing how much he would be awarded. In this jurisdiction here in London, we don't specify the amount we're claiming unless there's some specific rule about costs and how much you have to claim in order to pay what costs to the court. But generally speaking, they do put a figure on it in the US. It doesn't mean, of course, you get what you asked for, but it does show what he's seeking. Some basic questions. One, where would that case be heard? In Florida. In Florida.

6:42Two, how can he claim that the BBC, which as far as I'm aware, you can't even watch overseas, how can he claim, or how is he trying to claim, that the BBC could have the reach to damage his reputation in Florida? First of all, he is saying that people have used what's called a virtual private network. This is a way of getting around the restrictions that broadcasters impose on their live streams. If you try and pick up the BBC outside the UK, you're told this isn't available in your jurisdiction. You can't watch it here. But virtual private networks are meant to fool the broadcaster into thinking you are in the UK.

7:20They don't always work, but they are said to be ways of seeing things in a country where the programme makers don't want you to see them. That's helpful to know. Thank you. It's good to know. It's a handy thing to know. I can tell you it doesn't always work. I think it's perfectly lawful. A lot of people use it. In the legal claim, Trump says that people were advertising how to watch this panorama program here in the United States. So that's one thing. Then viewers outside the UK have access to a subscription service called Britbox. And Trump says that Britbox offers American subscribers, including Floridians, access to a substantial amount of the BBC's original content, including Panorama.

8:02And the third thing is that the BBC licenses its programs to licensing companies, which then sell them on to local broadcasters. So my next question is, and a lot of people will be thinking this, Donald Trump has a terrible reputation already. how can he be trying to claim that the BBC, foreign broadcaster, has greatly damaged that reputation? Especially when, I know it was unrelated, but he'd been impeached before by Congress. There have been several attempts in the United States to litigate what happened at the Capitol Hill riots. So on what basis is he saying the BBC has materially damaged a reputation that already is really damaged within his own country?

8:42Well, let me read you what his lawyers say.

9:12present, thereby causing massive economic damage to his brand value and significant damage and injury to his future financial prospects, in addition to continuing to harm his reputation as President of the United States of America. Now, that's what he says. You may have your views. I may have my views. But what matters if this comes to court are the views of the jury. Do you think it will come to court? What do you think BBC lawyers are doing right now in reaction to this? Well, if they wanted to settle, they would have settled by now. They would have begun negotiations with President Trump's lawyers during the period between last month when he threatened to sue and yesterday when he filed his claim.

9:55But a lot of people are saying, why give in? You've got a good defense. This program wasn't available to anybody or certainly not to many people. And yes, the BBC says, look, his reputation can't have been damaged because he went on to win the election immediately afterwards. But despite all this, they didn't settle. Now, they can still settle now. The question is whether they feel the damage caused to them by settling is greater than the risks of going to court. Now, if they settle now, they've obviously got to pay President Trump's legal costs. They've got to pay some compensation. They've got to pay more now because he's actually issued proceedings than they would have had to pay previously.

10:35We've no idea whether they even approached President Trump's lawyers. We've no idea whether there were settlement negotiations that broke down. We've no idea whether the BBC simply stood on principle. But what it now has to do is to decide how to proceed. If this case goes to court, it's going to cost the BBC millions of dollars, certainly if it goes to trial and appeal. and clearly that will come out of the licence fee that you pay, that I pay, that everybody in this country who watches television pays. On the other hand, there are plenty of people urging the BBC not to give in. It's a question really for the BBC.

11:11Is it definitely coming from the licence fee? There's been some suggestion that they have insurance to pay for these sorts of claims. Some people do have insurance against defamation. Large organisations sometimes take the view that it's cheaper not to go for insurance, but to bear the costs themselves out of their own income. There are commercial benefits that the BBC gets, but ultimately the money that the BBC gets from sales of programmes and from the licence fee and from everywhere else, that money goes to making programmes. Many people say that's what it should be spent on, not paying lawyers.

11:43Do you think that the BBC might already have harmed its case by having apologised for Panorama and for people having already resigned over it? It's very difficult for the BBC to justify its broadcast now that it's apologised, now that the Director-General and Chief Executive of News have announced that they're going to be resigning. But I don't think the BBC is doing this. It's simply saying there's no proof of damage. There's no proof that anybody saw this. But is that really something you should be fighting a case on? When you fight a defamation case, certainly in this country, you're fighting it as a matter of principle.

12:21You're saying it's fair comment on a matter of public interest. You're saying it hasn't damaged the reputation of this person you've written about because that person didn't have a reputation at all. You're not really fighting it on this question of who saw it and putting the claimant, in this case the president, to proof of, you know, well, I saw it and I saw it and I saw it. And I used to think the president was a great guy. But once I saw this program, I changed my mind. that I'm sure is something that could be done and it would be a question for the jury. Is that what the BBC wants to fight this for?

12:51That's what the BBC's got to decide. There were some of the Panorama staff reportedly actually wanted to stand by the initial broadcast. I'm now wondering if that might have been a smarter move because, as you say, by the BBC having apologised for it, it feels like they've already acknowledged that they were wrong. They have acknowledged that they were wrong. I think it would be difficult to stand by it. There is a principle in journalism which you sometimes see, which is the greater truth. In other words, it's fine to tell untruths if you are telling a story which is broadly speaking true but wrong on the details.

13:34They were concertining the speech so they could get to what they regarded as the salient points, which was, as far as they were concerned, Trump inspired people to march on Capitol Hill. Yes, and that is something that everybody accepts they shouldn't have done. It would be perfectly possible to put these two sections separated by a reporter's explanation, something to indicate that 55 minutes later he said this, anything to report the speech accurately, but to put the two clips together in a way that the BBC accepts is misleading is something that is indefensible and I certainly don't hold by the view that they're trying to create a greater truth, a broader picture, that overall what they're saying is accurate.

14:23There's also the question of the sequencing because, of course, they carried the sequence of people protesting and they put that after the speech whereas, in fact, it was filmed before. This were the Proud Boys who were shown, as you say, apparently marching after he had spoken when in fact they had marched earlier that day. Overall, do we think this has the potential to break the BBC, to bankrupt the BBC? I mean, on one hand, you could look at it and some of the rhetoric simply suggests that he's trying to make a political point against an organisation he considers, among many others, to be the enemy.

14:56And the numbers are so big. It sounds like it might not be serious. It sounds ludicrous, doesn't it? So, for instance, a spokesman for Trump told The Telegraph, the BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda. I mean, that to me sounds like the kind of assault that he might launch on any supposedly left leaning news organisation, be it CNN or in this case. And it's not a specific complaint. It's a beef. Yeah, there's a beef here. He's demonstrating a beef here with billion dollar claims. And it sort of speaks to just a wider political agenda rather than a realistic hope of getting this money from the BBC.

15:33So but at the same time, if he does push it all the way to court and we know, Joshua, he has a history actually of settling outside of court. But it does beg the question, could this break or bankrupt the BBC? Most cases in most countries settle and there's nothing wrong with settling. You bring a claim, the other side says, well, let's talk about this. You reach an agreement, you pay money, you usually pay the claimant's costs, and you settle. And newspapers regularly settle defamation claims, even if what they published was true. But in this jurisdiction, they may not be able to prove that what they published was true.

16:12And they settle and apologize, much to the annoyance of the journalist who said, but it was true. I was told it was true. I believe it to be true. My sources said it was true. So it is possible to settle in a dignified way. Yes, we were wrong. Here's some compensation. Here are your costs. Let's move on. If this case were to cost the BBC millions of pounds, well, I'm sure the BBC could afford it. I don't think the government's going to subsidise it with any more money. We're waiting to see what plans the government has for the BBC. Charter renewal is coming up. It is very difficult for the BBC either way.

16:49But the question for the BBC is whether to settle and cut their losses and pay a large but not huge sum now or risk paying a very large sum if this case goes against them. And even if they win, because they'll have to pay their own lawyers. No wonder they're now exploring the idea of having adverts in some of their programming. I suppose the question, Tim, is, is this about just making the point, getting some money and moving on? Or is he trying to bring down the BBC? This is what some of the left-wing commentators are suggesting. The Telegraph's revelling in all this. Behind the scenes, Robbie Gibb is pulling the strings.

17:24And this is about bringing down the national broadcaster. I'm not sure Trump cares that much to be bringing down the BBC, but I could be being my niece. He has tried to claim scalps in the United States, particularly from late night stand-up comedians who he's disagreed with and have subsequently lost their jobs. Plus, you could see it as being part of a package with J.D. Vance's famous speech about free speech in Europe, that Americans are convinced that Europe is committing suicide because liberals are driving in a particular direction. They always couch that as we want free speech, but I don't think they do.

17:57What they want is to correct. They want to rebalance the way they see it, the media landscape, so that right-wing voices are amplified and left-wing ones are played down. So you could see this is all part of Trump's general civilizational war to put the left back in its place. And that would include the BBC. I think he sees it in all of those ways. Yes, I'm sure he does see the BBC as left wing. I'm sure he does want to limit its criticism of him. Again, if you look at what he says in his claim, this is about malice, which he has to prove. He says the BBC's actual malice is further compounded by its prior acts that unequivocally demonstrate that the organisation has been anything but fair and impartial when it comes to reporting on President Trump.

18:41Substantial evidence demonstrates that before the publication of the Panorama documentary, the BBC and its leadership bore President Trump ill will, wanted him to lose the 2024 presidential election and were dishonest in their coverage of him. Now, the BBC would deny that, but that's how Trump sees it. But he also sees it, no doubt, as an opportunity to make some money to get some damages from the BBC, partly to punish the BBC and partly because he feels he's been defamed and wants to be compensated. We should note also that Trump is one of those people who would say he's not malicious and he'll strike down anyone who says that he is.

19:15Because in the wake of the horrific deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife, Yes. Donald Trump put out an extraordinary statement that even for him seemed to go far too far, accusing Reiner of Trump derangement syndrome and suggesting that he had died because of his obsession with Donald Trump. He signed it off with may they both rest in peace. Yes. So Trump to put out a couple of hundred words of sheer vitriolic malice and bile and then finish with and may they rest in peace. I know. We had two different really odd tweets yesterday. One was from Dale Vince and the other was from Trump trying to blame anyone other than the people that, in Dale Vince's case, carried out the Bondi Beach massacre.

19:58Apparently that was Israel's fault. No, I think it was probably down to the father and son gunman. And then Trump blaming Reiner himself for his own death when we know that his drug addict son is in custody. I mean, you cannot slander the dead, but for him to accuse others of malice when he then behaves in a malicious manner, the fact that the numbers involved just seems so big as to be almost farcical. And I think the spurious idea that the BBC matters in America. I can't believe the BBC swings American elections makes you think this is all fantasy. On the other hand, as Joshua has demonstrated, it could still end up costing the BBC millions and millions of pounds.

20:32Who benefits from this, Joshua? It's the lawyers. It's always the lawyers. I got into the wrong profession, I've realised, because over the Christmas period and beyond, lawyers at both the BBC and indeed in Trump land are going to be charging by the hour. They are going to be tucking into some large turkey this Christmas. Those lawyers certainly are, but I have to say something for the legal aid lawyers, the family legal aid lawyers. Yes, all right, the pro bonoers. Pro bono. But no, the people who do family legal aid, who fees have been changed once in the 30 years, the last 30 years by the government, they were cut.

21:06They're now worth half what they were 30 years ago. The criminal legal aid lawyers who are falling apart because there's no money in it. And that's one of the reasons for the delays in the courts. There are plenty of lawyers who do very well. And there are plenty of lawyers who are principled and just get by. I am on your side on this. I love this. Joshua Rosenberg, the father of the chapel for lawyers everywhere. And that's a good place to end because coming up next, we're going to be talking about a different set of professionals. we're going to talk about doctors and their own union rights and whether it is right that they're about to go on strike for five days as the NHS is in the grip of a flu crisis.

21:55Tim, it's the most wonderful time of the year, unless you're elderly and in hospital with flu, And you'd probably be slightly worried about the idea of being abandoned by a doctor's strike that the British Medical Association confirmed yesterday going to be a five-day walkout. They insist that nobody will die this Christmas because of it, but I think that's probably stretching the bounds of credulity. They have already received a 28.9 % increase in pay by Labour. They're demanding an additional 26 % pay rise. This has led to a tension with the government. To be fair, during the election, actually, Labour argued in favour of negotiations, but they did not think the BMA should be striking during the last election.

22:38But this time around, they're really furious with them. I was at the liaison committee yesterday where Keir Starmer was asked, between one and ten, how gutted are you that the BMA is going on strike? And he said, really, really gutted. Well, it's embarrassing because they gave these public sector pay rises to avert strike action. Yes. They did it with rail workers and lo and behold, they still went on strike. They did it with doctors and lo and behold, they're still going on strike. And this is the problem. They want to act tough. But as the Tories push back on them on the liaison committee, this is happening because you have signalled when you entered government that if people go on strike, if people demand more money, Labour will give it to them.

23:15Well, that's, by the way, borne out in some statistics that have been released by the ONS today. So apparently public sector wage growth has risen at its fastest rate on record. 7.6 % over the last year. That's the highest rate of growth since records began in 2001. That's almost double the 3.9 % increase in the private sector. Which just emphasises this really is the public sector government. Yes, precisely. It's a good government for the unemployed, of whom there'll be many more, and the public sector. Wes Streeting, our far-right health secretary, has called it, quote, the worst thing the BMA has done since they marched against the foundation of the NHS in 1948.

23:54I think that's always worth remembering. The BMA opposed the foundation of the NHS. And that's part of the reason why the NHS is structured the way it is today, with GPs, for instance, essentially being independent of the service, because Nye Bevan said he had to pack their mouths with gold in order to get the NHS established. So yes, they defend the principle of free at the point of delivery today, but they have always demanded that their own practices, that their salaries and their independence are protected. And so therefore, this tension between Labour and the doctors, one might argue, was there from the very beginning.

24:30Possibly. Although if you speak to any old school doctors like my dad, a retired GP, he will rail at the BMA, accuse it of becoming increasingly militant, suggest that the doctors who are going on strike are doing so completely in contravention of the Hippocratic Oath. He doesn't think doctors should go on strike at all. Kemi Bade, not the opposition leader, agrees with him on that. The Conservatives have said, like soldiers and police officers who are banned from walking out, that doctors should join that group. And then, of course, the doctors themselves say this is an assault on democracy. I would argue the BMA is not motivated here by democratic socialism.

25:08It's really functioning more like a cartel. They have become the teamsters of the United Kingdom. It's really about money, not about the quality of the service. Well, if you're asking for 26 % on top of 29%, then it does seem to be rather mercenary in its motivations. René Hunderkamp joins us now, a NHS GP. What's your view on this strike, René? Oh, there's so much I could come back at that you've just said that I agree with. But I think it's almost worth considering who the BMA Junior Doctors Committee are now. and basically there has been a takeover at the bma over the last few years by militant and i mean marxist militant doctors who came from momentum and you need to understand that they wanted to bring the last government down and believe me they want to bring this one down too there it's it might be about money but actually it's about politics here and i knew that they were not going to call off the strike when i heard this last week i knew that they they didn't give a damn about those old ladies in hospital, Camilla, they really didn't.

26:15These are not doctors in the true moral sense of the word that I understand it. And for them to say that nobody will die during this strike, I mean, they can't make that claim, because people have already died in one of the many other 11 strikes that they have had. Because we know that when there is a skeleton staff in hospitals, i.e. from Friday to Sunday night, people die more than in the week when there's a full staff. So these doctors know only too well that people are going to die and they frankly can't possibly care because if they did, they would not be going on strike tomorrow. So if it's not about the money for themselves, what is their objective?

27:00I mean, you said bringing down the government. What's the point of that? Look, I think that they do, obviously, they're quite happy to take more money. They took 29 % quite gladly. But anybody that looked into their WhatsApp groups that were released, they were very clear that they would just come back for more as soon as the government were weak. And they despise this government. They really want to see a very hard left Marxist style government. That's for sure. They actually despise anything in the NHS which looks like it may be progress. So they talk about the privatisation. You know, we use private companies in the NHS all of the time.

27:38I use those private companies to get my patients that might face a year's wait to see an orthopedic surgeon for their hip. I know that if I use one of the private companies and can get them in, it will be eight days. They despise that kind of medicine. They feel it's actually destroying the NHS in the way that they know it. Of course, they would like more money, but they're just being ridiculously greedy. as you rightly pointed out, they've had 29%. So to ask for another 27 % on top of that is lunacy. And they'll be just thinking, oh, well, if this works and we get it, all the better. But at the heart of their movement is a hardcore momentum style committee.

28:21Do you think Streeting's handling this quite well then or not? Oh, dear. I think if we went back to how we initially handled it, that was a disaster. So to just hand money over to them without any strings attached whatsoever. And those strings could have been no more strikes for four years, for example, while we're in power. There could have been productivity things alongside the extra bits and pieces. So I think because he failed a year ago, I don't think he can do anything right now. And actually, I agree with his rhetoric. I think everything they're doing is absolutely shameful. Do you think that doctors should be banned from striking?

29:05I never used to believe that they should, but having seen how this new cohort, and they are a new cohort, they do not have the same moral standards of previous doctors. So having seen how this new cohort behave, I think, yes, the time has come. Prior to that, I would have said no, but then I wouldn't have expected them to behave like this. before you go renee give us a little bit of warding off flu advice while you're here nobody wants their christmas to be blighted you know as i sit here coughing and i i do practice what i've reached camilla i don't do antibiotics i just see it through which means i sit with these things for a long time i think it's impossible to hide yourself away from the viruses that we live with i really do i think that if you're vulnerable if you're very old if you're immunosuppressed then by all means be careful about who you share you know a cup of tea with or who you see but for the rest of us there's nothing we can do we're going to catch them and we just have to make sure that we eat healthily we're of a healthy weight because when you're overweight you're fully inflamed and you don't fight things so well and just see it out until summer comes hand washing no masks though or masks renee no more masks i mean masks masks really damage people they damage so many people.

30:24They damage children, they damage communication, and they're killing the environment. Renée Hundekamp, thank you very much indeed for joining us on The Daily Tea today. Thank you.

30:39That conversation has changed my mind a bit because I thought doctors were just greedy, but what Renée is saying is that in fact there is a political motivation behind this, and therefore that raises the question, if militants take over a union, should they be allowed to strike because they're not doing it for normal union reasons, which is to protect the interests of their workers. And let's have some reader comments, because so many people who have watched the Daily Tea were medics and the rest of them all have flu. Adrian Waller says, as someone who spent a 35 year career in NHS pathology with nowhere near the earning potential of these people, I am disgusted by the total lack of morals.

31:14The BMA has clearly been taken over by a load of hard left rabble rousers and clearly the junior doctors are just blindly following you have lost the support of the majority i'm afraid by the way junior doctors don't like being referred to as junior doctors oh do they not well they took away the junior because it does refer to anybody i think up to 10 years after qualification and if you've been a doctor for nine years then you probably object to being called a junior but anyway that's just a terminology thing how about this from bill crawley as a retired doctor in my view it is absolutely morally indefensible to not put the service of patients before disputes about pay.

31:50They will earn far more than the average person over their careers and have an enviable NHS pension. Actually, the Telegraph did a piece last week saying that the number of NHS pensioners on more than 100 grand a year had doubled in the last few years. Where exactly do they think this extra money is coming from? If they haven't already lost it, this action will decimate the once held respect of the profession. And Karen Rain says, junior doctors want jobs at the end of their foundation years and to not have to compete with 20 ,000 foreign doctors. Many of our own trained junior doctors are currently unemployed at the end of their foundation years.

32:25They have in excess of £100 ,000 student debt and cost the NHS£250 ,000 to train. Madness. Well that's it for today. We'll be back tomorrow, 5pm.

32:42Thank you.