We must back BBC to the hilt against Trump
It is unnecessary to listen hard to catch the sound of a deafening silence on an issue that should trouble everybody who cares about Britain and its institutions.
Since President Donald Trump launched his $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC for alleged defamation and breach of trade practices, almost no major politician save the Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, has spoken out in the corporation’s defence.
The prime minister asserts that the case is a matter for the broadcaster.
Others, especially the lifelong foes of the BBC, assert that it has committed so many egregious blunders that it no longer deserves support.
Some pundits argue that the best response to all Trump’s extravagances is to say as little as possible, in the hope that he will drift away to initiate other sensations.
This view seems optimistic. He has shown himself tenacious as well as chronically litigious in suits against The New York Times, CBS, The Wall Street Journal and CNN, even when lawyers and circuit judges find his allegations without merit.
He can deploy boundless resources and impose costs that drain even the deepest pockets of defendants.
CBS’s then-owners Paramount gave Trump’s presidential library $16 million up front to settle a ridiculous action about the broadcaster’s handling of an interview with the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris during the 2024 election campaign.
Why did the defendants pay?
Because they feared that, if they did not, the US government — meaning Trump — would exploit federal regulatory power to scuttle the looming sale of CBS. Scores of American corporations, even the largest, are pouring money into the coffers of the president and the causes he favours, either to secure his support or to buy off his wrath.
Little is done to whitewash these transactions, though several members of Congress warned that the CBS settlement breached antibribery laws. Trump people simply shrugged: this is how we do business.
In the case of the BBC, however, much more is at stake. The president hates all media except those outlets that fawn over him. He is especially hostile to public broadcasters. He has cut off federal cash to America’s PBS and NPR, which struggle financially even on a good day, and is trying to shut down Voice of America. The BBC represents everything he most dislikes: it is publicly funded, liberal and wields enormous global influence.
We are heading into an alternative world where reason is nothing
It would be fair to guess that a majority of BBC staff — let us be cautious and suggest 95 per cent — are indeed hostile to Trump, believing him to be the most disastrous US president ever to occupy the White House. The Panorama programme that was broadcast shortly before the November 2024 US election committed a deplorable breach of ethics by editing together two sections of a 2020 Trump speech, to make it appear that he directly incited a violent uprising on Capitol Hill.
Yet other media, not to mention his own administration, every day commit more heinous crimes. As a newspaper editor I was obliged to accept responsibility for several comparable lapses, of which I was personally oblivious ahead of publication, committed by staffers as foolish as the Panorama film editor. Which of my peers has not done likewise? Trump has launched his malevolent BBC action at a federal court in Miami, a handpicked venue.
A negligible number of Floridians watch the British channel but most would surf along with Trump if he declared Monday to be Tuesday.
Even if the case falls, its costs will drain the BBC of millions which must come from licence-payers.
There are two big reasons why we should back the Beeb to the hilt in this wicked fight. First, whatever its flaws and failures of governance, it remains one of this country’s most important assets, a priceless instrument of soft power. Although it is not the artistic giant of former times, it still does some fine work unmatched by any other broadcaster in the world. The overwhelming weight of news information that it transmits is true and often brave. Its indisputable liberalism offers some counterweight to the conservative leanings of most British newspapers.
Second, we should understand the bigger game Trump and Maga are playing. They aspire to consolidate power in a society in which the only significant news sources are those sympathetic to themselves. They care nothing for fact or fairness — consider Trump’s repeated slanders on London as a cesspit of crime and his advocacy for Vladimir Putin.
A friend with a son living in Dallas has just visited him there. I suggested that Texans don’t much care that the name of the US has become mud abroad. He responded: “It’s not like that. They don’t even know how we feel about them, because they don’t read The New York Times. Their only sources of information are Fox News and Maga social media.”
A war is being waged, not only in the US but increasingly also in Europe, to cancel the entire intellectual movement that has dominated the West for 300 years since the Enlightenment, whereby we are schooled to reach decisions and conclusions on the basis of evidence.
We are heading into an alternative universe in which partisan impression is everything, objective reason nothing.
Robert Kennedy Jr and his antivaxers at the US health department are only second team among the Trump administration’s crusaders against truth. The president himself is conducting a historic, unprecedented campaign to convince the American people that Russia can be their friend and business partner, while Europe is their enemy.
Since Trump’s inauguration, national leaders on this side of the Atlantic, including Sir Keir Starmer, have displayed extreme caution in response to American insults and hostile acts. They strive to avert a high noon with the most powerful man on earth.
This is probably necessary. Trump is spoiling for a fight with Europe, not least in his impatience to complete the betrayal of Ukraine.
Yet none of us, and especially our government, should display indifference to his assaults on both US and foreign media organisations.
He identifies the interests of himself and of America with its tech giants, and fights every attempt to restrain their excesses. He is frustrating regulation of AI, even to the point of promoting legislation to prevent states from introducing their own restraining measures. Maga’s standard-bearers denounce efforts to prevent social media from publishing falsehoods, libels and hate messages as “attacks on free speech”. This week five British citizens campaigning for regulation of social media content were denied US visas, after the Trump administration alleged that they were seeking to censor tech companies. Tech investors are pouring hundreds of millions into supporting anti-regulation candidates for next year’s midterm elections.
None of us can guess how the Trump assault on the BBC will play out, because he wields unprecedented power, unchecked by personal dignity or decency. We should merely recognise that if he is successful in taming or suppressing liberal media at home and abroad, the world as well as the US will become a darker place.
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