Trump has costly score to settle

WORD from inside the BBC palisade is that it intends to defend itself “vigorously” against President Trump’s $10billion defamation lawsuit.

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Hmm. As Sir Humphrey Appleby might have murmured to the hapless Jim Hacker in the Beeb’s peerless political satire, Yes Minister: “Do you really think that’s wise, sir?” (A gentle query which, translated, actually meant: “Are you completely off your rocker?”)

The BBC’s core excuse over its dreadful Panorama screw-up, where an edit to Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech wrongly suggested he explictly called for violent insurrection on Capitol Hill, is consistent. It was, corporation bosses and PR spin doctors maintain, merely an unfortunate “mistake”.

Come again?

A recent BBC statement said the edit “unintentionally created the impression” that Panorama was showing a single uninterrupted section of the speech, rather than “excerpts from different points”.